The book hunter

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BENNO LOEWY UBRARY

COLt^CTtO BY

BENNO LOEWY
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•«OUI*TMto TOCONNCLL UMIVmCITV

Cornell University Library
Z992 .B97 1900

Book hunter / by John Hill Burton.

olin

3 1924 029 545 856

Cornell University
Library

The original of tliis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029545856

THE AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT

SECOND EDITION.

HE Author, in again laying his
little book before the public, has
taken, ' advantage of some sug-
gestions kindly contributed by the critics
who reviewed the previous edition, and he
has thus been enabled to correct a few
inaccuracies which they have courteously
characterised as mere errors of the press.
Productions of this indefinite kind are apt
to grow in the hands of an author ; and in
the course of his revision he was unable to

vi Adtfertisemcnt.

resist the temptation to throw in a few
additional touches here and there, as to
which he can oaly hope that they will not
deteriorate the volume in the eyes of those
who thought well of it in its old shape.

1863.

CONTENTS.

Part I.— ?^ig Nature.

INTRODUCTORY,

A VISION OF MIGHTY BOOK-HUNTERS, . .

REMINISCENCES,

CLASSIFICATION,

THE PROWLER AND THE AUCTION-HAUNTER,

PAGE
I

14

59
62

ilart IE— ?^tB JFuntttona,

THE HOBBY lOI

THE DESULTORY READER OR BOHEMIAN OF LITERATURE, . 108

THE COLLECTOR AND THE SCHOLAR H5

THE GLEANER AND HIS HARVEST I24

PRETENDERS, 161

HIS ACHIEVEMENTS IN THE CREATION OF LIBRARIES, . 168

THE PRESERVATION OF LITERATURE 20S

LIBRARIANS '. 227

BIBLIOGRAPHIES . . 233

VIU

Contents.

Part ]EH.— P|is dnb.

CLUK IN GEKEKAt,

THB STkDCTUU OF THK BOOK CLUli>,

THE KOXBCKCHC CLDB,

SOME aOOK-CLCB MEN

FACt

-5'

205

Part EU.— Boofc.CItiii l,(ttTatUT^

orNrRAiinu,

JOHN trAlMNC, .

tOBCRT WODROW,

TIIE EARLY N.>Kl|irKN SAINTS,

•■I KM.NS IM STOKES, .

3"

338

3Sa
404

INDEX.

419

THE BOOK-HUNTER.

PART I.— HIS NATURE.

Entroiiuctorg.

F the Title under which the contents
of the following pages are ranged
I have no better justification to offer
than that it appeared to suit their
discursive tenor. If they laid any
claim to a scientific character, or professed to con-
tain an exposition of any established department of
knowledge, it might have been their privilege to
appear under a title of Greek derivation, with all the
dignities and immunities conceded by immemorial
deference to this stamp of scientific rank. I not
only, however, consider my own trifles unworthy of
such a dignity, but am inclined to strip it from other

A

2 His Nature.

productions which might appear to have a more
appropriate claim to it. No doubt, the ductile inflec-
tions and wonderful facilities for decomposition and
reconstruction make Greek an excellent vehicle of
scientific precision, and the use of a dead language
saves your nomenclature from being confounded
with your common talk. The use of a Greek deriv-
ative gives notice that you are scientific. If you
speak of an acanthopterygian, it is plain that you
are not discussing perch in reference to its roasting
or boiling merits ; and if you make an allusion to
monomyarian malacology, it will not naturally be
supposed to have reference to the cooking of oyster
sauce.

Like many other meritorious things, however,
Greek nomenclature is much abused. The very
reverence it is held in^the strong disinclination on
the part of the public to question the accuracy of
anything stated under the shadow of a Greek name,
or to doubt the infallibility of the man who does
it — makes this kind of nomenclature the frequent
protector of fallacies and quackeries. It is an in-
strument for silencing inquiry and handing over
the judgment to implicit belief Get the passive
student ' once into palaeozoology, and he takes your
other hard names — ^your ichthyodorulite, trogon-
therium, lepidodendron, and bothrodendron — for
granted, contemplating them, indeed, with a kind
of religious awe or devotional reverence. If it be a

Introductory. 3

question whether a term is categorematic, or is of a
quite opposite description, and ought to be described
as jMwcategorematic,; one may take up a very abso-
lute positive position without finding many people
prepared to assail it.

Antiquarianism, which used to bean easy-gping
slipshod sort of pursuit, has sought this all-powerful
protection, and called itself Archaeology. An oblit-
erated manuscript written over again. is called a
palimpsest, and the man who can restore and read
it a paleographist. The great erect stone on the
moor, which has hitherto defied, all learning to find
the faintest trace of the age in which it was, erected,
its purpose, or the people who placed it there, seems
as it were to be rescued from the heathen darkness
in which it has dwelt, and to be admitted within the
community of scientific truth, by being christened a
monolith. If it be large and shapeless, it may take
rank as an amorphous megalith ; and it is on record
that the owner of some muirla^d acres, finding
them described in a learned work as " richly, mega-
lithic," became! suddenly excited by hopes which
were qiiickly extinguished when jthe inipprt; of the
term was, fully explained to him. Should there be
any remains of sculpture on such a stone, it .becomes
a lithoglyph or ahiei;oglyph:; and if the nature aiid
end of this sculpture be quite incomprehensible to
the adepts,' they, may term it, a, cryptoglyph, and
thus dignify, by a sort of title of hopour, the abso-

4 His Nature.

luteness of their ignorance. It were a pity if any-
more ingenious man should afterwards find a key-
to the mystery, and destroy the significance of the
established nomenclature.

The vendors of quack medicines and cosmetics
are aware of the power of Greek nomenclature,
and apparently subsidise scholars of some kind or
other to supply them with the article. A sort
of shaving soap used frequerjtly to be advertised
under a title which was as complexly adjusted a
piece of mosaic work as the geologists or the
conchologists ever turned out. But perhaps the
confidence in the protective power of Greek de-
signations lately reached its climax, in an attempt
to save thieves from punishment by calling them
kleptomaniacs.

It is possible that, were I to attempt to dignify
the class of men to whom the following sketches are
devoted by an appropriate scientific title, a difficulty
would start up at the very beginning. As the
reader will perhaps see, from the tenor of my dis-
course, I would find it difficult to say whether I
should give them a good name or a bad — to speak
more scientifically, and of course more clearly,
whether I should characterise them by a predicate
eulogistic, or a predicate dyslogistic. On the whole,
I am content with my first idea, and continue to
stick to the title of "The Book-Hunter," with all
the more assurance that it has been tolerated, and

Introductory. 5

even liked, by readers of the kind I am most
ambitious of pleasing.^

Few wiser things have ever been said than that
remark of Byron's, that "man is an unfortunate
fellow, and ever will be." Perhaps the originality
of the fundamental idea it expresses may be ques-
tioned, on the ground that the same warning has
been enounced in far more solemn language, and
from a far more august authority. But there is
originality in the vulgar everyday - world way of

^ To afford the reader, however, an opportunity of noting at a
glance the appropriate learned terms applicable to the different sets
of persons who meddle with books, I subjoin the following defini-
tions, as rendered in D'Israeli's Curiosities, from the Chasse aux
Bibliographes et aux Antiquaires mal avis& of Jean Joseph Rive :—

"A bibliognoste, from the Greek, is one knowing, in title-pages
and colophons, and in editions ; the place and year when printed ;
the.,presses whence issued; and all the minutiae of a book." — "A
bibliographe is a describer of books and other literary arrangements." —
"A bibliomane is an indiscriminate, accumulator, who blunders faster
than he buys, cock-brained and purse-heavy." — " A bibliophile, the
lover of books, is the only one in the class who appears, to read them
for his own pleasure." — "A bibliotaphe buries his books, by keeping
them under lock, or framing them in glass-cases."

The accurate Peignot, after accepting of this classification with
high admiration of its simplicity and exhaustiveness, is , seized in his
supplementary volume with a. misgiving in the matter of the biblio-
taphe, explaining that it ought to be translated as a grave of books,
and that the proper technical expression for the performer referred to
by Rive, is bibliothapt. He adds to the nomenclature bibliolyte, as
a destroyer of books ; bibliologue, one who discourses about books ;
bibliotacte, a classifier of books ; and bibliop^e, " Fart d'krire ou de
composer des livres," or, as the unlearned would say, thes function of
an author. Of the dignity with which . this writer can invest the
objects of his nomenclature, take the following specimen from his
description of the bibliographe : —

6 His Nature.

putting the idea, and this makes it suit the present
purpose, in which, a human frailty having to be
dealt with, there is no intention to be either devout
or philosophical about it, but to treat it in a
thoroughly worldly and practical tone, and in this
temper to judge of its place among the defects and
ills to which flesh is heir. It were better, perhaps,
if we human creatures sometimes did this, and dis-
cussed our common frailties as each himself partak-
ing of them, than that we should mount, as we are
so apt to do, into the clouds of theology or of ethics,

"Nothing is rarer than to deserve the title of bibliographe, and
nothing more difficult and laborious than to attain a just title to it.

"Bibliography being the most universal and extensive of all
sciences, it virould appear that all subjects should come under the
consideration bf the bibliographe ; languages, logic, criticism, philo-
sophy, eloquence, mathematics, geography, chronology, history, are
no strahgjers to him ; the history of printing and of celebrated printers
is familiar to him, as well as all the operations of the typographic
art. He is continually occupied with the works of the ancients and
the moderns ; he mates it his business to know books useful, rare,
and curious, not only> by their titles and form, but by their contents ;
he spends his life in analysing,, classifying, and describing them. He
seeks out those tvhich are recommended by talented authors ; he
runs through libraries and cabinets to increase the sum of his know-
ledge ; he studies authors who have treated of the science of books,
he poihts out their errors ; he chooses from among new productions
those which bear the stamp of genius, and which will live in men's
memories ; he ransacks periodicals to kedp himself well up to the
discoveries of his age, and compare theni with those of ages past ; he
is greedy of all works which treat of libraries; particularly catalogues,
when they are well constructed and well arranged, and their price
adds to their value. Such is the genuine Bibliografhe" This re->
minds one of the old Roman jurists, who briefly defined their own
science as the knowledge of things human and divine.

Introductory. 7

according as our temperament and training are of
the serious or of the intellectual order. True, there
are many of our brethren violently ready to proclaim
themselves frail mortals, miserable sinners, and no
better, in theological phraseology, than the greatest
of criminals. But such has been my own unfortun-
ate experience in life, that whenever I find a man
coming forward with these self-denjanciations on his
lips, I am prepared for an exhibition of intolerance,
spiritual pride, and envy, hatred, malice, and all un-
charitableness, towards any poor fellow-creature who
has floundered a little out of the straight path, and
being all too conscious of his errors, is not prepared
to proclaim them in those broad emphatic terms
which come so readily to the lips of the censors,
who at heart believe themselves spotless.r^just as
complaints about poverty, and inability to buy this
and that, come from the fat lips^ef the millionaire,
when he shows you his gallery of pictures, his stud,
and his forcing-frames.

No ; it is hard to choose between the two. The
man who has no defect or crack in his character —
no tinge of even the minor immoralities — no fan-
tastic humour carrying him sometimes off his feet-
no preposterous hobby — such a man, walking straight
along the surface of this world in the arc of a circle,
is a very dangerous character, no doubt ; of such all
children, dogs, simpletons, and other creatures that
have the instinct of the odious in their nature, feel

8 His Nature.

an innate loathing. And yet it is questionable if
your perfectionised Sir Charles Grandison is quite
so dangerous a character as your "miserable sinner,"
vociferously conscious that he is the frailest of the
frail, and that he can do no good thing of himself
And indeed, in practice, the external symptoms of
these two characteristics have been known so to
alternate in one disposition as to render it evident
that each is but the same moral nature under a
different external aspect, — the mask, cowl, varnish,
crust, or whatever yOu like to call it, having been
adapted to the external conditions of the man — that
is, to the society he mixes in, the set he belongs to,
the habits of the age, and the way in which he pro-
poses to get on in life. It is when the occasion
arises for the mask being thrown aside, or when
the internal passions burst like a volcano through
the crust, that terrible events take place, and the
world throbs with the excitement of some wonder-
ful criminal trial.^

^ It has often been observed that it is among the Society of Friends,
who Jceep so tight a rein on the passions and propensities, that these
make the most terrible work when they break loose. De Quincey,
in one of his essays on his contemporaries, giving a sketch of a man
of great genius and high scholarship, whose life was early clouded
by insanity, gives some curious statements about the effects of the
system of rigid restraint exercised by the Society of Friends, Which
I am not prepared either to support or contradict. After describing
the system of restraint itself, he says: "This is known, but it is
not equally known that this unnatural restraint, falling into collision
with; two forces at once — the force of passion and of youth — not
unfrequently records its own injurious ' tendencies, and publishes the

Introductory. 9

The present, however, is not an inquiry into the
first principles either of ethics or of physiology.
The object of this rambling preamble is to win from
the reader a morsel of genial fellow-feeling towards

rebellious movements of nature by distinct and anomalous diseases.
And, further, I have been assured, upon most excellent authority,
that these diseases — strange and elaborate affections of the nervous
system — are found exclusively among the young men and women of
the Quaker Society ; that they are known and understood exclusively
amongst physicians who have practised in great towns having a large
Quaker population, such as Birmingham ; that they assume a new
type and a more inveterate character in the second or third genera-
tion, to whom this fatal inheritance is often transmitted ; and, finally,
that if this class of nervous derangements does not increase so much
as to attract public attention, it is simply because the community
itself — the Quaker body — does not increase, but, on the contrary, is
rather on the wane."

There exist many good stories which have for their point the
passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this per-
suasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of
these is a north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in
his Description of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the
first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and
the pugilist. He was a colonel in the great civil wars, and had seen
wild work in his day ; but in his old age a change came over him,
and, becoming a follower of George Fox, he retired to spend his
latter days on his ancestral estate in Kincardineshire. Here it came
to pass that a brother laird thought the old Quaker could be easily
done, and began to encroach upon his marches. ^ Barclay, a strong
man, with the iron sinews of his race, and their fierce spirit still
burning in his eyes, strode up to the encroacher, and, with a grim
smile, spoke thus: "Friend, thou knowest that I have become a
man of peace and have relinquished strife, and therefore thou art
endeavouring to take what is not thine own, but mine, because thou
believest that, having abjured the arm of the flesh, I cannot binder
thee. And yet, as thy friend, I advise thee to desist ; for shouldst
thou succeed in rousing the old Adam within me, perchance he may
prove too strong, not only for me, but for thee." There was no use
of attempting to answer such an argument.

lo His Nature.

the human frailty which I propose to examine and
lay bare before him, trusting that he will treat it
neither with the haughty disdain of the immaculate,
nor the grim charity of the " miserable sinner : " that
he may even, when sighing over it as a failing, yet
kindly remember that, in comparison with many
others, it is a failing that leans to virtue's side. It
will not demand that breadth of charity which"even
rather rigid fathers are permitted to exercise by the
licence of the • existing school of French fiction.^
Neither will it exact such extensive toleration as
that of the old Aberdeen laird's wife, who, when her
sister lairdesses were enriching the tea-table conver-
sation with broad descriptions of the abominable

^ la the renowned Dame aux Camelias, the respectable, rigid, and
rather indignant father, addresses his erring son thus: "Que vous
ayez une maltressg, c'est fort bien; que vous la payiez comme un
galant homme doit payer I'amour d'une fiUe entretenue, c'est on ne
peut mieux ; mais que vous oubliez les choses les plus saintes pour
elle, que vous permettiez que la bruit de votre vie scandaleuse arrive
jusqu'au fond de ma province, et jette I'ombre d'une tache sur le nom
honorable que je vous ai donne — voil4 ce qui ne peut etre, voila ce
qui ne sera pas.."

So even the French novelists draw the line "somewhere," and in
other departments of morals they may be found drawing it closer than
many good uncharitable Christians among us would wish. In one
very popular novel the victim spends his wife's fortune at the gaming-
table, leaves her to starve, lives with another woman, and, having
committed forgery, plots with the Mephistqpheles of the story to buy
his own safety at the price of his wife's honour. This might seem
bad enough, but worse remains. It is told in a smothered whisper,
by the faithful domestic, to the horrified family, that he has reason
to suspect his, maStei''of h(iying indulged, once at least, if not qftener,
in brandy-and-water !

Iniroduciory. 1 1

vices of their several spouses, said her own "was
just a gueed, weel- tempered, couthy, queat, inno-
cent, daedlin, drucken body — wi' nae ill practices
aboot him ava ! " But all things in their own time
and place. To understand the due weight and bear-
ing of this feeling of optimism, it is necessary to
remember that its happy owner had probably Spent
her youth in that golden age when it was deemed
churlish to bottle the claret, and each guest iilled
his stoup at the fountain of the flowing hogshead ;
and if the darker days of dear claret came upon her
times, there was still to fall back upon the silver
age of smuggled usquebaugh, when the types of a
really hospitable country -house were an anker of
whisky always on the spigot, a caldron ever on
the bubble with boiling water, and a cask of sugar
with a spade in it, — all for the manufacture of
toddy.

The habits of that age have passed away, and
with them the drunken laird and the widely tolerant
wife. The advancing civilisation which has nearly
extinguished this class of frailties among those who
have the amplest means of indulgence in them, is,
no doubt, doing for other frailties, and will come at
last to the one in hand, leaving it an object of admir-
ing and compassionate retrospect to an enlightened
posterity. There are people, howfever, too impatient
to wait for such results from the mellowing influ-
ence of progressive civilisation. Such a edhsidera-

12 His Nature.

tion suggests to me that I may be treading on dan-
gerous ground — dangerous, I mean, to the frail but
amiable class to whom my exposition is devoted.
Natural misgivings arise in one who professes to call
attention to a special type of human frailty, since the
world is full of people who will be prepared to deal
with and cure it, provided only that they are to have
their own way with the disease and the patient,
and that they shall enjoy the simple privilege of
locking him up, dieting him, and taking possession
of his worldly goods and interests, as one who, by
his irrational habits, or his outrages on the laws
of physiology, or the fitness of things, or some other
neology, has satisfactorily established his utter in-
capacity to take charge of his own affairs. No !
This is not a cruel age ; the rack, the wheel, the
boot, the thumbikins, even the pillory and the stocks,
have disappeared ; death -punishment is dwindling
away ; and if convicts have not their full rations of
cooked meat, or get damaged coifee or sour milk,
or are inadequately supplied with flannels and
clean linen, there will be an outcry and an inquiry,
and a Secretary of State will lose a percentage
of his influence, and learn to look better after the
administration of patronage. But, at the same time,
the area of punishment — or of " treatment," as it is
mildly termed- — becomes alarmingly widened, and
people require to look sharply into themselves lest
they should be tainted with any little frailty or

Introductory. 1 3

peculiarity which may transfer them from the class
of free self-regulators to that of persons under "treat-
ment." In Owen's parallelograms there were to be
no prisons : he admitted no power in one man to
inflict punishment upon another for merely obeying
the dictates of natural propensities which could not
be resisted. But, at the same time, there were to
be "hospitals" in which not only the physically
diseased, but also the mentally and morally diseased,
were to be detained until they were cured ; and when
we reflect that the laws of the parallelogram were
very stringent and minute, and required to be abso-
lutely enforced to the letter, otherwise the whole
machinery of society would come to pieces, like a
watch with a broken spring, — it is clear that these
hospitals would have contained a very large propor-
tion of the unrationalised population.

There is rather an alarming amount of this sort of
communism now among us, and it is therefore with
some little misgiving that one sets down anything
that may betray a brother's weakness, and lay bare
the diagnosis of a human frailty. Indeedj the bad
name that proverbially hangs the dog has already
been given to the one under consideration, for bib-
liomania is older in the technology of this kind of
nosology than dipsomania, which is now understood
to be an almost established ground for seclusion, and
deprivation of the management of one's own affairs.
There is one ground of consolation, however, — the

14 His Nature,

people who, being all right themselves, have under-
- taken the duty of keeping in order the rest of the
world, have far too serious a task in hand to afford
time for idle reading. There is a good chance, there-
fore, that this little book may pass them unnoticed,
and the harmless class, on whose peculiar frailties
the present occasion is taken for devoting a gentle
and kindly exposition, may yet be permitted to go
at large.

So having spoken, I now propose to make the
reader acquainted with some characteristic speci-
mens of the class.

a Fiston cf iWtflJitg B0ofe=?|untera.

S the first case, let us summon from the
shades -my' venerable friend Archdea-
con Meadow, as he was in the body.
You see him now^tall, straight, and
meagre, but with a grim dignity in his air which
warms into benignity as, he inspects a pretty little
clean Elzevir, or a tall portly Stephens, concluding
his inward estimate of the prize with a peculiar
grunting chuckle, known by the initiated to be an
important announcement. This is no doubt one
of the milder and more inoffensive types, but still
a thoroughly confirmed and obstinate case. Its
parallel to the classes who are to be taken charge

Mighty Book- Hunters. 15

of by their wiser neighbours is only too close and
awful ; for have not sometimes the female members
of his household been known on occasion of some
domestic emergency — or, it may be, for mere sake of
keeping the lost man out of mischief — to have been
searching for him on from bookstall unto bookstall,
just as the mothers, wives, and daughters of other
lost men hunt them through their favourite taverns
or gambling-houses? Then, again, can one forget
that occasion of his going to London to be examined
by a committee of the House of Commons, when
he suddenly disappeared with all his money in his
pocket, and returned penniless, followed by a
waggon containing 372 copies of ra,re editions of
the Bible? All were fish that came to his net. At
one time you might find him securing a minnow for
sixpence at a stall — and presently afterwards he
outbids some princely collector, and secures with
frantic impetuosity, " at any price," a great fish he
has been patiently watching year after year. His
hunting-grounds were wide and distant, and there
were mysterious rumours about the numbers of
copies, all identically the same in edition and minor
individualities, which he possessed of certain books.
I have known him, indeed, when beaten at an
auction, turn round resignedly and say, "Well, so
be it — but I daresay I have ten or twelve, copies
at home, if I could lay hands on them."

It is a matter of extreme anxieity to his friends,

1 6 His Nature.

and, if he have a well-constituted mind, of sad mis-
giving to himself, when the collector buys his first
duplicate. It is like the first secret dram swallowed
in the forenoon — the first pawning of the silver
spoons — or any other terrible first step downwards
you may please to liken it to. There is no hope for
the patient after this. It rends at once the veil of
decorum spun out of the flimsy sophisms by which
he has been deceiving his friends, and partially
deceiving himself,' into the belief that his previous
purchases were necessary, or, at all events, service-
able for professional and literary purposes. He now
becomes shameless and hardened ; and it is observ-
able in the career of this class of unfortunates, that
the first act of duplicity is immediately followed by
an access of the disorder, and a reckless abandon-
ment to its propensities. The Archdeacon had long
passed this stage ere he crossed my path, and had
become thoroughly hardened. He was not remark-
able for local attachment ; and in moving from
place to place, his spoil, packed in innumerable
great boxes, sometimes followed him, to remain un-
released during the whole period of his tarrying in
his new abode, so that they were removed to the
next stage of his journey through life with modified
inconvenience.

Cruel as it may seem, I must yet notice another
and a peculiar vagary of his malady. He had re-
solved, at least once in his life, to part with a

Mighty Book- Hunters. 17

considerable proportion of his collection — better to
suffer the anguish of such an act than endure the
fretting of continued restraint There was a won-
drous sale by auction accordingly ; it was something
like what may have occurred on the dissolution of
the monasteries at the Reformation, or when the
contents of some time-honoured public library were
realised at the period of the French Revolution. Be-
fore the affair was over, the Archdeacon himself made
his appearance in the midst of the miscellaneous
self-invited guests who were making free with his
treasures, — he pretended, honest man, to be a mere
casual spectator, who, having seen, in passing, the
announcement of a sale by auction, stepped in like
the rest of the public. By degrees he got excited,
gasped once or twice as if mastering some desperate
impulse, and at length fairly bade. He could not
brazen out the effect of this escapade, however, an4
disappeared from the scene. It was remarked by
the observant, that an unusual number of lots were
afterwards knocked down to a military gentleman,
who seemed to have left portentously large orders
with the auctioneer. Some curious suspicions began
to arise, which were settled by that presiding genius
bending over his rostrum, and explaining in a con-
fidential whisper that the military hero was in reality
a pillar of the Church so disguised.

The Archdeacon lay under what, among a portion
of the victims of his malady, was deemed a heavy

B

1 8 His Naturie.

scandal. He was suspected of reading his own
books — that is to say, when he could get at them ;
for there are those who may still remember his
rather shamefaced apparition of an evening, peti-
tioning, somewhat in the tone with which an old
schoolfellow down in the world requests your assist-
ance to help him to go to York to get an appoint-
ment — petitioning for the loan of a volume of which
he could not deny. that he possessed numberless
copies lurking in divers parts of his vast collection.
This reputation of reading the books in his collec-
tion, which should be sacred to external inspection
solely, is, with a certain school of book-collectors, a
scandal, such as it would be among a hunting set to
hint that a man had killed a fox. In the dialogues,
not always the most entertaining, of Dibdin's Biblio-
mania, there is this short passage : " ' I will frankly
Confess,' rejoined Lysander, 'that I am an arrant
bibliomaniac — that I love books dearly — that the

very sight, touch, and mere perusal ' ' Hold,

my friend,' again exclaimed Philemon ; ' you have
renounced your profession — you talk of reading
books — do bibliomaniacs ever read books?'"

Yes, the Archdeacon read books — he devoured
them ; arid he did so to full prolific purpose. His
was a mind enriched with vfiried learning, which he
gave forth with full, strong, easy flow, like an inex-
haustible perennial spring coming from inner reser-
voirs, never dry, yet too capacious to exhibit the

Mighty Book-Hunters. 19

brawling^ bubbling symptoms of repletion. It was
from a majestic heedlessness of the busy world and
its fame that he got the character of indolence, and
was set down as one who would leave no lasting
memorial of his great learning. But when he died,
it was not altogether without leaving a sign ; for
from the casual droppings of his pen has been pre-
served enough to signify to many generations of
students in the walk he chiefly affected how richly
his mind was stored, and how much fresh matter
there is in those fields of inquiry where compilers
have left their dreary tracks, for ardent students to
cultivate into a rich harvest. In him truly the
bibliomania may be counted among the many illus-
trations of the truth so often moralised on, that the
highest natures are not exempt from human frailty
in some shape or other.

Let us now summon the shade of another de-
parted victim — Fitzpatrick Smart, Esq. He, too,
through a long life, had been a vigilant and enthu-
siastic collector, but after a totally different fashion.
He was far from omnivorous. He had a principle
of selection peculiar and separate from all other's, as
was his own individuality from other men's. You
could not classify his library according to any of
the accepted nomenclatures peculiar to the initiated.
He was not a black-letter man, or a tall copyist, or
an uncut man, oi- a rough-edge man, or an early-
English-dramatist, or an Elzevirian, or a broadsider.

20 His Nature.

or a pasquinader, or an old-brown-calf man, or a
Grangerite, or a tawny-moroccoite, or a gilt-topper,
a marbled-insider, or an editio prinpeps man ; neither
did he come under any of the more vulgar classifi-
cations of collectors whose thoughts run more upon
the usefulness for study than upon the external
conditions of their library, such as those who affect
science, or the classics, or English poetic and his-
torical literature. There was no way of defining his
peculiar walk save by his own name — it was the
Fitzpatrick-Smart walk. In fact, it wound itself in
infinite windings through isolated spots of literary
scenery, if we may so speak, in which he took a
personal interest. There were historical events, bits
of family history, chiefly of a tragic or a scandalous
kind, — efforts of art or of literary genius on which,
through some hidden intellectual law, his mind and
memory loved to dwell ; and it wels in reference to
these that he collected. If the book were the one
desired by him, no anxiety and toil, no payable
price, was to be grudgdd for its acquisition. If the
book were an inch out of his own line, it might be
trampled in the mire for aught he cared; be it as
rare or costly as it could be.

It was difficult, almost impossible, for others to
predicate what would please this wayward sort of
taste, and he was the torment of the book-caterers,
who were sure of a princely price for the right
article, but might have the wrong one thrown in

Mighty Book-^Hunters. 21

their teeth with contumely. It was a perilous, but,
if successful, a gratifying thing to present him with
a book. If it happened to hit his fancy, he felt the
full force of the compliment, and overwhelmed the
giver with his courtly thanks. But great observa-
tion and tact were required for such an adventure.
The chances against an ordinary thoughtless gift-
maker were thousaiids to one ; and those who were
acquainted with his strange nervous temperament,
knew that the existence within his dwelling-place
of any book not of his own special kind, would
impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy horror
which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes
into its cell. Presentation copies by authors were
among the chronic torments of his existence. While
the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself
on his liberality in making the judicious gift, the
recipient was pouring out all his sarcasm, which
was not feeble or slight, on the odious object, and
wondering why an author could have entertained
against him so steady and enduring a malice as to
take the trouble of writing and printing all that
rubbish with ho better object than disturbing the
peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every
tribute from such dona ferentes cost him much un-
easiness and some want of sleep — for what could he
do with it ? It was impossible to make merchan-
dise of it, for he was every inch a gentleman. He
could not burn it, for under an acrid exterior he had

22 His Nature.

a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he
had established some limbo of his own, in which
such unwelcome commodities were subject to a kind
of burial or entombment, where they remained in
existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of
his household gods.

These gods were a pantheon of a lively and
grotesque aspect, for he was a hunter after other
things besides books. His acquisitions included
pictures, and the various commodities which, for
want of a distinctive name, auctioneers call " miscel-
laneous articles o|" vertu." He started on his ac-
cumulating career with some old family relics, and
these, perhaps, gave the direction to his subsequent
acquisitions, for they were all, like his books,
brought together after some self-willed and peculiar
law of association that pleased himself A bad,
even an inferior, picture he would not have — for his
taste was exquisite — unless, indeed, it had some
strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward
fancies, and then he would adopt the badness as a
peculiar recommendation, and point it out with some
pungent and appropriate remark to his friends.
But though, with these peculiar exceptions, his
works of art were faultless, no dealer could ever
calculate on his buying a picture, however high in,
artistic merit or tempting as a bargain. With his
ever-accumulating cdllefction, in which tiny sculpture
and brilliant colour predominated, he kept a sort of

Mighty Book- Hunters. 23

fairy world around him. But each one of the mob
of curious things he preserved had some story link-
ing it with others, or with his peculiar fancies, and
each one had its precise place in a sort of epos, as
certainly as each of the persons in the confusion of
a pantomime or a farce has his own position and
functions.

After all, he was himself his own greatest curi-
osity. He had come to manhood just after the
period of gold-laced waistcoats, small-clothes, and
shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a
living memorial of these now antique habits. It
happened to be his lot to preserve down to us the
earliest phase .of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while
the rest of the world were booted or heavy shod, his
silk-stockinged feet were thrust into pumps of early
Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was the
surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make
before it came to be called a frock. Round his
neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite neckerchief
(not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a
great poultice — and so he took his walks abroad,
a figure whiph he could himself have turned into
^~adraiirabi6ridicule.

One of the mysteries about him was, that his
clothes, though unlike any other person's, were
always old. This characteristic could not even be
accounted for by the supposition that he had laid
in a sixty years' stock in his youth, for they always

24 His Nature.

appeared to have been a good deal worn. The very
umbrella was in keeping — it was of green silk, an
obsolete colour ten years ago — and the handle was
of a peculiar crosier -like formation in cast -horn,
obviously not obtainable in the market. His face
was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth ;
and, bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light-
brown hair which had long ago legitimately shaded
his brow, when he stood still — except for his linen,
which was snowy white — one might suppose that
he had been shot and stuffed on his return home
from college, and had been sprinkled with the frowzy
mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals
and other things, in which a semblance to the fresh-
ness of living nature is vainly attempted to be pre-
served. So if he were motionless ; but let him
speak, and the internal freshness was still there, an
ever-blooming garden of intellectual flowers. His
antiquated costume was no longer grotesque — it har-
monised with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred
gentleness of manner, which he had acquired from
the best sources, since he had seen the first company
in his day, whether for rank or genius. And con-
versation and manner were far from exhausting his
resources. He had a wonderful pencil — it was
potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the ridi-
culous ; but it took a wayward wilful course, like
everything else about him. He had a brilliant pen,
too, when he chose to wield it ; but the idea that

Mighty Book- Hunters. 25

he should exercise any of these his gifts in common
display before the world, for any even of the higher
motives that make people desire fame and praise,
would have sickened him. His faculties were his
own as much as his collection, and to be used accord-
ing to his caprice and pleasure. So fluttered through
existence one who, had it been his fate to have his
own bread to make, might have been a great man.
Alas for the end ! Some curious annotations are all
that remain of his literary powers — some drawings
and etchings in private collections all of his artistic.
His collection, with its long train of legends and
associations, came to what he himself must have
counted as dispersal. He left it to his housekeeper,
who, like a wise woman, converted it into cash while
its mysterious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a
great auction-room, its several catalogued items lay
in humiliating contrast with the decorous order in
which they were wont to be arranged. Sic transit
gloria mundi.

Let us now call up a different and a more com-
monplace type of the book-hunter — it shall be Inch-
rule Brewer. He is guiltless of all intermeddling
with the contents of books, but in their external
attributes his learning is marvellous. He derived his
nickname, from the practice of keeping, as his insep-
arable pocket-companion, one of those graduated
folding measures of length which may often be seen
protruding from the moleskin pocket of the joiner.

26 His Nature.

He used it at auctions and on other appropriate
occasions, to measure the different elements of a
book — the letterpress — the unprinted margin — the
external expanse of the binding ; for to the perfectly
scientific collector all these things are very signifi-
cant.^ They are, in fact, on record among the
craft, like the pedigrees and physical characteristics
recorded in stud-books and short-horn books. One
so accomplished in this kind of analysis could tell
at once, by this criterion, whether the treasure under
the hammer was , the same that had been knocked
down before at the Roxburghe sale — the Askew, the
Gordonstouri, or the Heber, perhaps — or was veri-
tably an impostor — or was in reality a new and
previously unknown prize well worth contending
for. The minuteness and precision of his know-
ledge exicited wonder, and, being anomalous in the
male sex even among collectors, gave occasion to a
rumour that its possessor must veritably be an aged
maiden in disguise.

^ Of the copy of the celebrated 1635 Elzevir Csesar, in the Imperial
Library at Paris, Brunet triumphantly infonns us that it, is four inches
and ten-twelfths in height, and occupies the high position of being
the tallest copy of that volume in the wdrld, since other illustrious
copies put in competition vfith it have been found not to exceed four
inches and eight, or, at the utmost, nine, twelfths.

"Ces details," he subjoins, "paroitront sans doute puMs a bien
des gens : mais puisque c'est la grandeur des marges de ces sorts de
livres qu'en determine la valeur, il faut bien fixer le maximum de
cette grandeur, afin que les amateurs puissent appr&ier las exem-
plaires qui approchent plus ou moins de la raesure donriee."

Mighty Book- Hunters. 27

His experience, aided by a heaven-born genius
tending in that direction, rendered him the most
merciless detector of sophisticated books. Nothing,
it might be supposed on first thought, can be a
simpler or more easily recognised thing than a book
genuine as printed. But in the old-book trade there
are opportunities for the exercise of ingenuity in-
ferior only to those which render the picture-dealer's
and the horse-dealer's functions so mysteriously in-
teresting. Sometimes entire facsimiles are made of
eminent volumes. More commonly, however, the
problem is to complete an imperfect copy. This
will be most satisfactorily accomplished, of course,
if another copy can be procured imperfect also, but
not in the same parts. Great ingenuity is some-
times shown in completing a highly esteemed edition
with fragments from one lightly esteemed. Some-
times a colophon or a decorated capital has to be
imitated, .and bold operators will reprint a page or
two in facsimile ; these operations^ of course, involve
the inlaying of paper, judiciously staining it, and
other mysteries. Paris is the great centre of this
kind of work, but it has been pretty extensively pur-
sued in Britain ; and the manufacture of first folio
Shakespeares has been nearly as staple a trade as the
getting up of genuine portraits of Mary Queen of
Scots. It will establish a broad distinction to note
the fact, that whereas our friend the Archdeacon
would collect several imperfect copies of the same

28 His Nature.

book, in the hope of finding materials for one per-
fect one among them, Inchrule would remorselessly
spurn from him the most voluptuously got-up speci-
men (to use a favourite phrase of Dibdin's) were it
tainted by the very faintest suspicion of " restoration."
Among the elements which constitute the value
of a book— rarity of course being essential — one
might say he counted the binding highest. He was
not alone in this view, for it would be difficult to
give the uninitiated a conception of the importance
attached to this mechanical department of book-
making by the adepts. About a third of Dibdin's
Bibliographical Decameron is, if I recollect rightly,
devoted to bindings. There are binders who have
immortalised themselves — as Staggemier, Walther,
Payne, Padaloup, Hering, De Rome, Bozerian,
Deseuille, Bradel, Faulkner, Lewis, Hayday, and
Thomson. Their names may sometimes be found
on their work, not with any particularities, as if
they required to make themselves known, but with
the simple brevity of illustrious men. Thus you
take up a morocco-bound work of some eminence,
on the title-page of which the author sets forth his
full name and profession, with the distinctive initials
of certain learned societies to which it is his pride
to belong ; but the simple and dignified enunciation,
deeply stamped in his own golden letters, " Bound
by Hayday," is all that that accomplished artist
deigns to tell.

Mighty Book-Hunters. 29

And let us, after all, acknowledge that there are
few men who are entirely above the influence of
binding. No one likes sheep's clothing for his
literature, even if he should not aspirS to russia
or morocco. Adam Smith, one of the least showy
of men, confessed himself to be a beau in his books.
Perhaps the majority of men of letters are so ' to
some extent, though poets are apt to be ragamuffins.
It was Thomson, I believe, who used to cut the
leaves with his snuffers. Perhaps an event in his
early career may have soured him of the proprieties.
It is said that he had an uncle, a clever active me-
chanic, who could do many things with his hands,
and contemplated James's indolent, dreamy, "feck-
less" character with impatient disgust. When the
first of The Seasons — Winter it was, I believe —
had been completed at press, Jamie thought, by a
presentation copy, to triumph over his uncle's scep-
ticism, and to propitiate his good opinion he had
the book handsomely bound. The old man never
looked inside, or asked what the book was about,
but, turning it round and round with his fingers in
gratified admiration, exclaimed — "Come, is that
really our Jamie's doin' now ? — weel, I never thought
the cratur wad hae had the handicraft to do the
like ! "

The feeling by which this worthy man was influ-
enced was a mere sensible practical respect for good
workmanship. The aspirations of the collectors,

30 His Nature.

however, in this matter, go out of the boundaries
of the sphere of the utilitarian into that of the
aesthetic. Their priests and prophets, by the way,
do not seem to be aware how far back this venerai-
tion for the coverings of books may be traced, or
to know how strongly their votaries have been
influenced in the direction of their taste by the
traditions of the middle ages. The binding of a
book was, of old, a shrine on which the finest work-
manship in , bullion and the costliest gems were
lavished. The psalter or the breviary of some early
saint, a portion of the Scriptures, or some other
volume held sacred, would be thus enshrined. It
has happened sometimes that tattered fragments of
them have been preserved as effective relics within
outer shells or shrines ; and in some instances, long
after the books themselves have disappeared, speci-
mens of these old bindings have remained to us
beautiful in their decay ; — but we are getting far
beyond the Inchrule.

Your affluent omnivorous collector, who has more
of that kind of business on hand than he can per-
form for himself, naturally brings about him a train
of satellites, who make it their business to minister
to his importunate cravings. With them the phrase-
ology of the initiated degenerates into a hard busi-
ness sort of slang. Whatever slight remnant of
respect towards literature as a vehicle of knowledge
may linger in the conversation of their employers,

Mighty Book-Hunters. 31

has never belonged to theirs. They are dealers
who have just two things to look to — the price of
their merchandise, and the peculiar propensities of
the unfortunates who employ them. Not that they
are destitute of all sympathy with the malady which
they feed. The caterer generally gets infected in
a superficial cutaneous sort of way. He has often
a collection himself, which he eyes complacently of
an evening as he smokes his pipe over his brandy-
and-water, but to which he is not so distractedly
devoted but that a pecuniary consideration will
tempt him to dismember it. It generally consists,
indeed, of blunders or false speculations — books
which have been obtained in a mistaken reliance
on their suiting the craving of some wealthy col-
lector. Caterers unable to comprehend the subtle
influences at work in the mind of the book-hunter,
often make miscalculations in this way. Fitzpatrick
Smart punished them so terribly, that they at last
abandoned him in despair to his own devices.

Several men of this class were under the autho-
rity of the Inchrule, and their communings were
instructive. "Thorpe's catalogue just arrived, sir —
several highly important announcements," says a
portly person with a fat volume under his arm,
hustling forward with an air of assured consequence.
There is now to be a deep and solemn consultation,
as when two ambassadors are going over a heavy
protocol from a third. It happened to me to see

32 His Nature.

one of these myrmidons returning from a bootless
errand of inspection to a reputed collection ; he
was hot and indignant. "A collection" he sput-
tered forth — "that a collection! — mere rubbish, sir
— irredeemable trash. What do you think, sir? —
a set of the common quarto edition of the Delphini
classics, copies of Newton's works and Bacon's
works, Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and so forth —
nothing better, I declare to you : and to call that a
collection ! " Whereas, had it contained The Par-
doner and the Frere, Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, A
Knacke to knowe a Knave, Banke's Bay Horse in a
Trance, or the works of those eminent dramatists,
Nabbes, May, Glapthorne, or Chettle, then would
the collection have been worthy of distinguished
notice. On another occasion, the conversation
turning on a name of some repute, the remark is
ventured, that he is " said to know something about
books," which brings forth the fatal answer — "He
know about books! Nothing — nothing at all, I
assure you ; unless, perhaps, about their insides."

The next slide of the lantern is to represent a
quite peculiar and abnormal case. It introduces a
strangely fragile, unsubstantial, and puerile figure,
wherein, however, resided one of the most potent
and original spirits that ever frequented a tenement
of clay. He shall be called, on account of associa-
tions that may or may not be found out, Thomas
Papaverius. But how to make palpable to the

Mighty Book-Hunters. 3 3

ordinary human being one so signally divested of
all the material - and common characteristics of
his race, yet so nobly endowed with its rarer and
loftier attributes, almost paralyses the pen at the
very beginning.

In what mood and shape shall he be brought
forward ? Shall it be as first we met at the table
of Lucullus, whereto he was seduced by the false
pretence that he would there meet with one who
entertained novel and anarchical opinions regarding
the Golden Ass of Apuleius? No one speaks of
waiting dinner for him; He will come and depart
at his own sweet will, neither burdened with punc-
tualities nor , burdening others by exacting them.
The festivitiies of the afternoon are far on when a
commotion is heard in the hall as if some dog or
other stray animal had. forced its way in. The
instinct of a friendly guest tells him of the arrival^r-
he opens the door, and fetches in the little stranger.
What can it be ? a street-boy of some sort ? His
. costume, in fact, is a boy's duffle great-coat, very
threadbare, with a hole in it, and buttoned tight to
the chin, where it meets the fragments of a parti-
coloured belcher handkerchief; on his feet are list-
shoes, covered with snow, for it is a stormy winter
night; and the trousers ^ — some one suggests that
they are inner linen garments blackened with writ-
iflg-ink, but that Papaverius never would have been
at the trouble so to disguise them. What can be

c

24 His Nature.

the theory of such a costume? The simplest thing
in the world— it consisted of the fragments of ap-
parel nearest at hand. Had chance thrown to him
a court single-breasted coat, with a bishop's apron, a
kilt, and top-boots, in these he would have made his
entry.

The first impression that a boy has appeared
vanishes instantly. Though in one of the sweetest
and most genial of his essays he shows how every
man retains so much in him of the child he origin-
ally was — and he himself retained a great deal of
that primitive simplicity — it was buried within the
-depths of his heart— not visible externally. On the
contrary, on one occasion when he corrected an
erroneous reference to an event as being a century
old, by saying that he recollected its occurrence, one
felt almost a surprise at the necessary limitation in
his age, so old did he appear, with his arched
brow loaded with thought, and the countless little
wrinkles which engrained his skin, gathering thick-
ly round the curiously expressive and subtle lips.
These lips are speedily opened by some casual re-
mark, and presently the flood of talk passes forth
from them; free, clear, and continuous — never rising
into declamation — never losing a certain mellow
earnestness, and all consisting of sentences as ex-
quisitely joifited- together as if they were destined
to challenge the criticism of the remotest posterity.
Still the hours stride over each other, and still flows

Mighty Book-Hunters. 35

on the stream of gentle irhetoric, as if it were labitur
et labetur in omne volubilis avum. It is now far
in to the night, and slight hints and suggestions are
propagated about separation and home-going. The
topic starts new ideas on the progress of civilisa-
tion, the effect of habit on men in all ages, and the
power of the domestic affections. Descending from
generals to the special, he could testify to the incon-
venience of late hours ; for, was it not the other
night that, coming to what was, or what he, believed
to be,- his own door, he knocked, and knocked, but
the old woman within either couldn't or wouldn't
hear him, so he scrambled over a wall, arid; having
taken his :repose in a furrow, was a,ble to testify to
the extreme unpleasantness of such a couch. The
predial gi'oove might indeed nourish kindly the
infant seeds and shoots of the peculiar vegetable to
which it was appropriated, but was not a comfort-
able place of repose for adult man.

Shall I try another sketch of him, when, travel-
stained and foot-sore, he glided in on us one night
like a shadow,! the child by the fire gazing on him
with round, eyes of astonishment, and suggesting
that he should get a penny and go home — a pro-
posal which , he subjected to some philosophical
criticism very far wide of its practical tenor. How
far he had ; wandered since he had last refreshed
himself, or even whether he had eaten food that day,
were matters on which there was no getting articu-

36 His Nature.

late utterance from Him. Though his costume was
muddy, however, and. his communications about the
material wants of life very hazy, the ideas which he
had stored up during his wandering poured them-
selves forth as clear and sparkling, both in logic and
language, as the purest fountain that springs from a
Highland rock.

How that wearied,, worn, little body was to be re-
freshed was a difficult problem : soft food disagreed
with him— the hard he could not eat. Suggestions
pointed at length to the solution of that vegetable
unguent to which he had given a sort of lustre,
and it might be supposed that there were some fifty
cases of acute toothache to be treated in the house
that night. How many drops ? Drops ! nonsense.
If the wine-glasses of the establishment were not
beyond the ordinary normal size, there was no risk
— and so the weary is at rest for a time.

At early morn a triumphant cry of Eureka ! calls
me to his place of rest. With his unfailing . in-
stinct he has got at the books, and lugged a: con-
siderable heap, of them around him. That one
which specially claims his attention — my best bound
quarto — is spread upon' a piece of bedroom furniture
readily at hand, and of sufficient height to let him
pore over it as he lies recumbent on the floor, with
only one article of attire to separate him from the
condition in which Archimedes, according to the
-popular story, shouted the same triumphant cry.

Mighty Book-Hunters. 37

He had discovered a very remarkable anachronism
in the commonly received histories of a very im-
portant period. As he expounded it, turning up
his unearthly face from the bpok with an almost
painful expression of grave eagerness, it occurred to
me that I had seen something like the scene in
Dutch paintings of the temptation of St Anthony.

Suppose the scene changed to a pleasant Country-
house, where the enlivening talk has make a guest

forget, ; , J . ,

" The lang Scots miles,

The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles,"

that lie between him and his place of rest. He
must be instructed in his course, but the instruction
reveals, more difficulties than it removes, and there
is much doubt and discussion, \yhich Papaverius at
once clears up as effectually as he had ever dispersed
a, cloud of logical sophisms; and this time the feat
is performed by a stroke of, the thoroughly practical,
which looks like inspiration — he will : acpompany the
forlorn .traveller, and .lead him through the difficul-
ties of the way—rfor have not midnight wanderings
and musings made, him familiar with all its intrica-
cies? Roofed by a huge wideawake, which makes
his tiny figure look like the stalk of some great
fungus, with a lantern of more than common dimen-
sions in his hand, away he goes down the wooded
path, up the steep bank, along the brawling stream,
and across the waterfall — and ever as he goes there

38 His Nature.

cdmes from hiirri a continued stream of talk concern-
ing the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and other
kindred matters. Surely if we two were seen by
any hiiiiiah eyes, it must have been supposed that
some gnome, or troll, or kelpie was luring the list-
ener to his doom. The worst of- such affairs as this
was the consciousness that, when left, the old man
would continue walking on until, weariness over-
cortiing him; he would take his rest, wh'erevier that
happened, like some poor mendicant. He used to
denounce, with liis most fervent eloquence, that bar-
barous and brutal provision of the law of England
which rendered sleeping in the open air an act of
vagrancy, and so punishable, if the sleeper could
riot give a satisfactory account of himself — a thing
which Papaverius never could give under any cir-
cumstances. After' all,'! fear this is an attempt to
describe the indescribable. It was the commonest
of sayings when any of his friends were mentioning
to each other "his last," and creating mutual shrugs
of astonishment, that, were one to attempt to tell all
about' him, no man would believe it, so separate
would the whole be from all the normal conditions
of human nature.

The difficulty becomes more inextricable in pass-
ing from specific little incidents to an estimation of
the general nature of the man. The logicians lucidly
describe definition as h&mg per genus et differmUam.
You' have the characteristics in which all of the

Mighty BookrHmnters. 39

genus partake as common ground, and then you
individualise your object by showing in what it
differs from the others of the genus. But we are
denied this standard for Papaverius, so entirely did
he stand apart, divested of' the ordinary characteris-
tics of social man — of those characteristics without
which the human race as a body could not get on or
exist For instance, those who knew him a little
might call him a loose man in money matters ;
those who knew him closer laughed at the idea
of coupling any notion' of pecuniary or other like
responsibility with his nature. You might as well
attack the character; of the nightingale, which may
have nipped up your five- pound note and torn it
to shreds to serve as nest-building material. Only
immediate craving necessities, could ever extract
from him an acknowledgment of the common
vulgar agencies by which men subsist in civilised'
society ; and only whilfe the necessity lasted did the
acknowledgment exist. Take just one example,
which will render this clearer than any generalities.
He arrives very late at a friend's door, and on gain-
ing admission — a process in whichhe often endured
impediments — he represents, with his usual silver
voice and measured rhetoric, the absolute necessity
of his being then and there invested with a sum
of money in the current coin of the realm — the
amount limited, from the nature of his necessities,
which he very freely states,) to' seven shillings and

40 His Nature.

sixpence. Discovering, or fancying he discovers,
signs that his eloquence is likely to be unproductive,
he is fortunately reminded that, should there be
any difficulty in connection with security for the
repayment of the loan, he is at that moment in
possession of a document, which he is prepared to
deposit with the lender — a document calculated,
he cannot doubt, to remove any feeling of anxiety
which the most prudent person could experience in
the circumstances. After a rummage in his pockets,
which develops miscellaneous and varied, but as
yet by no means valuable possessions, he at last
comes to the object of his search, a crumpled bit of,
paper, and spreads it out — a fifty-pound bank-note !
The friend, who knew him well, was of opinion that,
had he, on delivering, over the seven shillings and
sixpence, received the bank-note, he never would
have heard anything more of the transaction from
the other party. It was also his opinion that, before
coming to a personal friend, the owner of the note
had made several efforts to raise money on it among
persons who might take a purely business view of
such transactions ; but the lateness of the hour, and
something in the appearance of the thing altogether,
had induced these mercenaries to forget their cun-
ning, and decline the transaction. ,
He stretched till it broke , the proverb that to
give quickly is as good as to give twice. His giv-;
ing was quick enough on the rare occasions when he

Mighty Book- Hunters. 41

had wherewithal to give, but then the act was final,
and could not be repeated. If he suffered in his
own person from this peculiarity, he suffered still
more in his sympathies, for he was full of them to
all breathing creatures, and, like poor Goldy, it was
agony to him to hear the beggar's cry of distress,
and to hear it without the means of assuaging it,
though in a departed fifty pounds there were doubt-
less the elements for appeasing many a street wail.
All sums of money were measured by him through
the common standard of immediate use ; and with
more solemn pomp of diction than he applied to the
bank-note, might he inform you that, with the gen-
tleman opposite, to whom he had hitherto been
entirely a stranger, but who happened to be nearest
to him at the time when the exigency occurred to
him, he had just succeeded in negotiating a loan, of
"twopence." He was and is a great authority in
political economy. I have known great anatomists
and physiologists as careless of their health as he
was of his purse, whence I have inferred that some-
thing more than a knowledge of the abstract truth
of political economy is necessary to keep some men
from pecuniary imprudence, and that something
more than a knowledge of the received principles
of physiology is necessary to bring others into a
course of perfect sobriety and general obedience to
the laws of health, Further, Papayerius; had an
extraordinary insight, into practical human life; not

42 His Nature.

merely in the abstract, but in the concrete ; not
merely as a philosopher of human nature, but as one
who 'saw into those who passed him in the walk of
life with the kind of intuition attributed to expert
detectives — a faculty that is known to have belonged
to more than one dreamer, and is one of the mys-
teries in the nature of J. J. Rousseau ; and, by the
way, like Rousseau's, his handwriting was clear,
angular, and unimpassioned, and not less uniform
and legible than printing — as if' the medium of con-
veying' so noble a thing as thought ought to be:
carefully, symmetrically, and decorously constructed,
let all other material things be as neglectfully and
scornfully dealt with as may be.

This is a long proemium to the description of his
characteristics as a book-hunter — but these can be
briefly told. Not for him were the common enjoy-
ments and excitements of the pursuit He cared
not to add volume unto volume, and heap up the
relics of the printing-press. All the external niceties
about pet editions, peculiarities of binding or of
prifating, rarity itself, were no more to him than to
the Arab or the Hottentot. His pursuit, indeed,
was like that of the savage who seeks but to appease
the hunger of the moment If he catch a prey just
sufficient for his desires, it is well ; yet he will not
hesitate to bring down the elk or the buffalo, and,
satiating himself with the choicer delicacies, abandon
the bulk of the carcass to the wolves or the vultures.

Mighty Book- Hunters. 4 3

So of Papaverius. If his inlt&l'lettual appetite were
craving after some passage in 'thfe CEdipus, or in the
Medeia, or in Plato's Republic, he would be quite
contented with the' most tattered and valueless frag-
ment of the volume, if it contained what he wanted ;
but, on the other hand, he would not hesitate to
seize upon your tall copy in russia gilt and tooled.
Nor would the exemption of an editio princeps from
everyday sordid work restrain his sacrilegious hands.
If it should contain the thing he desires to see, what'
is to hinder him from wrenching out the twentieth
volume of your Ericyclop^die Methbdique, or Ersch
und Gruber, leaving a vacancy like an extracted
front tooth, and carrying it off to his den of Cacus?
If you should mention the ma:ttef to any vulgar-
mannered acquaintance givdrl to the unhallowed
practice of jefering, he would probably touch his
nose with his extended palm and say, "Don't you
wish you may get it?" True, the world at large
has gained a brilliant essay on EUfipides or' Plato — ■
but what is that to the rightful owner of the lost
sheep ?

The learned world may veiy fairly be divided into
those who return the books borrowed by them, and
those who do not. Papaverius belonged decidedly
to the latter order. A friend addicted to the mar-
vellous boasts that, urider the pressure of a call by
a public library to replace a mutilated book with a
new copy, which would have cost £"^0, he recovered

44 His Nature.

a volume from Papaverius, through the agency of a
person specially bribed and authorised to take any
necessary measures, insolence and violence excepted
— but the power of extraction that must have been
employed in such a process excites very painful
reflections. Some legend, too, there is of a book
creditor having forced his way into the Cacus den,
and there, seen a sort of rubble-work inner wall of
volumes, with their edges outwards, while others,
bound and unbound, the plebeian sheepskin and the
aristocratic russian, were squeezed into certain tubs
drawn from the washing establishment of a con-
fiding landlady. In other instances the book has
been recognised at large, greatly enhanced in value
by a profuse edging of manuscript notes from a
gifted pen— a phenomenon calculated to bring into
practical use the speculations of the civilians about
pictures painted on other people's panels.^ What
became of all his waifs and strays, it might be well
not to inquire too curiously. If he ran short of
legitimate tabula rasa to write on, do you think he
would hesitate to tear out the most convenient
leaves of any broad-margined book, whether be-
longing to himself or another? Nay, it is said he

^ "Si quis in aliena tabula pinxerit, quidam putant, tabulam
picturse cedere : aliis videtur picturam (qualiscunque sit) tabulse
cedere : sed nobis videtur melius esse tabulam picturse cedere.
Ridiculum est enim • picturam Apellis vel Parrhasii in accessionem
vilissimje tabulse cedere," — Inst. ii. i. 34.

Mighty . Boak- Hunters. 45

once gave in copy written on the edges of a tall
octavo Somnium Scipionis ; and as he did not
obliterate the original matter, the printer was rather
puzzled, and made a funny jumble between the
letterpress Latin and the manuscript English. All
these things were the types of an intellectual vitality
which despised and thrust aside all that was gross
or material in that wherewith it came in contact.
Surely never did the austerities of monk or ancho-
rite so entirely cast all these away as his peculiar
nature removed them from him. It may be ques-
tioned if he, ever knew what it was "to eat a good
dinner," or could even comprehend . the nature of
such a felicity. Yet in all the sensuous nerves
which connect as it were the body with the ideal,
he was painfully susceptible. Hence a false quan-
tity or a wrong note in music was agony to him ;
and it, is- remembered with what ludicrous solemnity
he apostrophised his unhappy fate as one over whom
a cloud of the darkest despair had just been drawn
— a peacock had come to live within hearing dis-
tance from him, and not only the terrific yells of
the accursed biped; pierced him to the soul, but
the continued terror of their recurrence kept his
nerves in agonising tension during the intervals of
silence.

Peace be with his gentle and kindly spirit, now
for some time separated from its grotesque and
humble tenement of clay. It is both right and

46 His Nature.

pleasant to say that the characteristics here spoken
of were not those of his latter days. In these he
was tended by affectionate hands ; and I have
always thought it a wonderful instance of the power
of domestic care and management that, through the
ministrations of a devoted offspring, this strange
being was so cared for, that those who came in
contact with him then, and then only, might have
admired him as the patriarchal head of an agree-
able and elegant household.

Let us now, for the sake of variety, summon up a
spirit of another order — Magnus Lucullus, Esq. of
Grand Priory. He is a man with a presence — tall,
and a little portly, with a handsome pleasant coun-
tenance looking hospitality and kindliness towards
friends, and a quiet but not easily, solvable reserve
towards the rest of the world. He has no literaiy
pretensions, but you will not talk long with him
without finding that he is a scholar, and a ripe and
good one. He is complete and magnificent in all
-his belongings, only, as no man's qualities and char-
acteristics are of perfectly uniform balance and
parallel action, his library is the sphere in which
his disposition for the complete and the magnificent
has most profusely developed itself.

As you enter its Gothic door a sort of indistinct
slightly musky 'perfume, like that said- to frequent
Oriental bazaars, hovers around. Everything is of
perfect finish — the mahogany -railed gallery — the

Mighty Book-Hunters , 47

tiny ladders — tihe broad - winged lecterns, with
leathern cushions on the edges to keep the woqd
from grazing the rich bindings-^ the books them-
selves, each shelf unifqrm with its facings or ratl;ier
backings, like well-dressed lines at a review. Their
owner does not, profess to indulge much in quaint
monstrosities, though many a book of rarity is
: there. In the first place, he must have the best
and most complete editions, whether common or
rare ; aqd, in the second' place, they must be in
perfect condition. All the classics are there — one
complete set of Valpy's in good, russia, and many
separate copies of each, valuable for text or annota-
tion. The . copies of Bayle, Moreri, the Trevoux
Dictionary, Stephens's , Lexicon, Du Cange, . Mabil-
lon's , Antiquities, the Benedictine historians, the
BoUandists' Lives of the Saints, Graeyius and Gro-
novius, and heavy books of that order, are in their
old original morocco, without a scratch or abrasure,
gilt-edged, vellum-jointed, with their ba,cks blazing
in tooled gold. Your own dingy well-thumbed
Bayle or Moreri possibly cost you two or three
pounds; his cost forty or fifty. Further,, in these
affluent shelves may be found those great, costly
works which cross the .border of "three figures," and
of which only one or two of the public .libraries can
boast, such as the Celebri Famiglie Italiane of Litta,
iDenon's Egypt, the great' French work on the arts
of the middle ages, and the like; and many is the

48 His Nature.

scholar who, unable to gratify his cravings else-
where, has owed it to Lucullus that he has seen
something he was in search after in one of these
great books, and has been able to put it to public

use.

Throughout the establishment there is an appear-
ance of care and order, but not of restraint Some
inordinately richly -bound volumes have special
grooves or niches for themselves lined with soft
cloth, as if they had delicate lungs, and must be
kept from ca;tching cold. But even these are not
guarded from the hand of the guest. Lucullus says
his books are at the service of his friends ; and, as
a hint in the same direction, he recommends to your
notice a few volumes from the collection of the
celebrated Grollier, the most princely and liberal of
collectors, on whose classic book-stamp you find the
genial motto, " Joannis Grollierii et amicorum.''
Having coiiferred on you the freedom of his library,
he will not concern himself by observing how you
use it He would as soon watch you after dinner to
note whether you eschew common sherry and show
an expensive partiality for that madeira at twelve
pounds a-dozen, which other men would probably
only place on the table when it could be well in-
vested in company worthy of the sacrifice. Who
shall penetrate the human heart, and say whether a
hidden pang or gust of wrath has vibrated behind
that placid countenance, if you have been seen to

Migkty Book-Hunters. 49

drop an ink-spot on the creamy margin of the Men-
telin Virgil, or to, tumble that heavy Aquinas from
the ladder and dislocate his joints ? As all the
world now knows, however, men assimilate to the
conditions by which they are surrounded, and we
civilise our city savages by substituting cleanness
and purity for the putrescence which naturally ac-
cumulates in great cities. So, in a noble library, the
visitor is enchained to reverence and, courtesy by
the genius of the place. You cannot toss about its
treasures as you would your own rough calfs and
obdurate hogskins ; as soon would you be tempted
to pull out your meerschaum and punk-box in a
cathedral. It is hard to say, but I would fain be-
lieve that even Papaverius himself might have felt
some sympathetic touch from the, spptless perfection
around him and the noble reliance of the owner ;
and that he might perhaps have restrained,, himself
from tearing out the most petted rarities, as a wolf
would tear a fat lamb from the fold.

Such, then, are some " cases " discussed in a sort
of clinical lecture. It will be seen that they have
differing symptoms — some mild and genial, others
ferocious and dangerous. Before passing to another
and the last case, I propose to say a word or two on
some of the minor specialties which characterise, the
pursuit in its less amiable or dignified form. It, is,
for instance, liable to be accompanied by an affec-
tion, known also to the agricultural world as affect-

D

5°

His Nature.

ing the wheat crop, and called "the smiit." For-
tunately this is less prevalent among us than the
French, who have a name for the class of books
affected by this school of collectors in the Biblio-
tMque bleue. There is a sad story connected with
this peculiar frailty. A great and high-minded
scholar of the seventeenth centuiy had a savage
trick. played on him by some mad wags, who col-
lected a quantity of the brutalities of which Latin
literature affords an endless supply, and published
them in his name. He is said not long to have
survived this practical joke; and one does not
wonder at his sinking before such a prospect, if he
anticipated an age and a race of book-buyers among
whom his great critical Works are forgotten, and his
name is known solely for the spurious volume,
Sacred to infamy, which may be found side by side
with the works of the author of Trimalcion's Feast
— " par nobile fratrum."

There is another failing, without a leaning to
virtue's side, to which some collectors have been, by
reputation at least, addicted — a propensity to obtaift
articles without value given for them — a tendency
to be larcenish. It is the culmination, indeed, of a
sort of lax morality apt to grow out of the habits
and traditions of the class. Your true collector —
not the man who follows the occupation as a mere
expensive taste, and does not cater for himself—
considers himself a finder or discoverer rather than

Mighty Book-Hunters. 51

a purchaser. He is an industrious prowler in un-
likely regions, and is entitled to some reward for his
diligtence and his skill. Moreover, it Is the essence
of that very skill to find value in those things
which, in the eye of the ordinary ' possessor, are
really w'orthless. From estimating them at little
value, and paying little for them, the steps are rather
too short to estimating them at nothing, and paying
nothing for them. What matters it, a few dirty
black-letter leaves picked out of that volume of
miscellaneous trash — leaves which the owner never
knew he had, and cannot miss — which he would
not know the value of, had you told him of them ?
What use of putting notions into the greedy barba-
rian's head, as if one were to find treasures for him ?
And the little pasquinade is so curious, and will fill
a gap in that fine collection so nicely! The notions
of the collector about such spoil are indeed the con-
verse of those which Cassio professed to hold about
his good name, for the scrap furtively removed is
supJ)Osed in no way to impoverish the loser, while
it makes the recipient rich indeed.

Those habits of the prowler which may gradually
lead a mind not strengthened by strong principle
into this downward career, are hit with his usual
vivacity and wonderful truth by Scott. The speaker
is our delightful iriend Oldenbuck of IVfohkbarns^ the
Antiquary, and what he -says has just enough of
confession in it to show a consciousness that the

52 His Nature.

narrator has gone over dangerous- ground, and, if we
did not see that the narrative is tinged with some
exaggeration, has trodden a little beyond the limit.s
of what is gentlemanly and just.

"'See this bundle of ballads, not one of them
later than 1700, and some of them a hundred years
older. I, wheedled, an old woman out of these, who
loved them better than her psalm-book. Tobacco,
sir, snuff, and the Complete Syren, were the equiva-
lent ! For that mutilated copy of the Complaynt
of Scotland I sat out the drinking of two dozen
bottles of strong ale with the late learned proprietor,
who in gratitude bequeathed it to me by his last
will. These little Elzevirs are the memoranda and
trophies of many a walk: by night and morning
through , the Cowg^te, the Canongate, the Bow, St
Mary's Wynd — wherever, in fine, there were to be
found brokers: and trokers, those miscellaneous
dealers in things rare and curious. How often have
I stood haggling: on a halfpenny, lest, by a too ready
acquiescence in the dealer's first price, he should be
led to suspect the value I set upon the article!
— how have I trembled lest some passing stranger
should chop in between me and the prize, and
regarded each. PPor student of divinity that stopped
to turn over the books at the stall as a rival amateur
or prowling bookseller in disguise! — And then, Mr
Lovel, the sly satisfaction with which one pays the
consideration, and pockets the article, affecting a

Mighty Book- Hunters. 53

cold indifference, while the hand is trembling with
pleasure ! — Then to dazzle the eyes of our wealthier
and emulous rivals by showing them such a treasure
as this ' (displaying a little black smoked book about
the size of a primer) — 'to enjoy their surprise and
envy, shrouding meanwhile, under a veil of mys-
terious consciousness, our own superior knowledge
and dexterity ; — these, my young" friend, these are
the white moments of life, that repay the toil and
pains and sedulous attention which our profession,
above all others, so peculiarly demands ! ' "

There is a nice subtle meaning in the worthy man
calling his weakness his. "profession," but it is in
complete keeping with the mellow Teniers-like tone
of the whole picture. Ere we have done I shall
endeavour to show that the grubber among book-
stalls has, with other grubs ^or grubbers, his useful
place in the general dispensation of the world. But
his is a pursuit exposing him to moral perils, which
call for peculiar efforts of self-restraint to save him
from them ;. and the moral Scott holds forth — for a
sound moral; he always: has — ^is, If you go as far as
Jt)nathan Oldenbuck 'did— and I don't advise you to
go so far, but hint that you should stop earlier —
say to yourself, Thus' far, and no farthei'. ' '

So much for pne of the debased, symptoms which
in very bad cases sometimes characterise an other-
wise genial failing. There is another peculiar, and,
it may be said, vicious propensity, exhibited occa-

54 His Ndture.

sionally in conjunction with the pursuit. This pro-
pensity is, like the other, antagonistic in spirit to the
tenth commandment, and consists in a desperate
coveting of the neighbour's goods, and a satisfaction,
not so much in possessing for one's self, as in dis-
possessing him. This spirit is said to burn, with
still fiercer flame in the breasts of those whose pur-
suit would externally seem to be the; most' innocent
in the world, and the least excitive of the bad pas-
sions — namely, among flower-fanciers. From some
mysterious cause,; it has been known to develop
itself most flagrantly among tulip-collectors, inso-
much that there are legends of Dutch devotees
of this pursuit who have paid their thousands-, of
dollars for a duplicate tuber, that they might have
the satis^faction of crushing it under the heel.^ This
line of practice is not entirely alien to the book-
hunter. Peignoti tells us that it is of rare occurrence

' "The great {mint of view in a collector is to possess that not
possessed by any other. It is §aid ofa collector lately deceased, that
Ke used to purchase scarce prints at enormous prices in order to
destroy them, and thereby render the remaining impressions more
scarqeand valuable."— (jr(j)se's Olioj'p. 57. I do not fenow to vifhom
Grose allludes ; but it strikes me, in realising a man given to such
propensities — taking them Ss a reality and not a joke — that it would
be interesting to k);iow how, in his-,inoments;of serous thought, he
could contemplate his favourite pursuit — as, for instance, when the
conscientloBi physician may havfe thought it necessary to warn him
in time, of the approaching end — how he could reckon up his good
use of the talents bestowed on him, counting among them his oppor-
tunities for' the ebcoilragement'ofart as an elevator and improver of
the human race. ■ , . , ' 1

Mighty B,ook- Hunters. 55

among his countrymen, and yet, as we have seen,
he thought it necessary to correct the technical
term applied to this kind of practitioner, by calling
him a Bibliothapte when he conceals books — a Bib-
liolyte when he destroys them. Dibdin warmed
his convivial guests at a comfortable fire, fed by
the woodcuts from which had been printed the
impression of the Bibliographical Decameron. It
was a quaint fancy, and deemed to be a pretty and
appropriate form of hospitality, while it effectually
assured the subscribers to his costly volumes that
the vulgar world who buy cheap books was defin-
itively cut off from participating in their privileges.

Let us, however, summon a more potent spirit of
this order. He is a different being altogether from
those gentle shadows who have flitted past us already.
He was known in the body by many hard names,
such as the Vampire, the Dragon, &c. He was an
Irish absentee, or, more accurately, a refugee, since
he had made himself so odious on his ample estate
that he could not live there. How on earth he
should have set about .collecting books is one of the
inscrutable mysteries which ever surround the diag-
nosis of this peculiar malady. Setting aside his
using his booJcs by reading them as out of the ques-
tion, he yet was never known to indulge in that
fondling and complacent examination of their ex-
terior and general condition, which, to Inchrule and
others of his class, seemed to afford the highest

56 His Nature.

gratification that, as sojourners through this vale of
tears, it was their lot to enjoy. Nor did he luxuri-
ate in the collective pride — like that of David when
he numbered his people — of beholding how his vol-
umes increased in multitude, and ranged with one
another, like well-sized and properly dressed troops,
along an ample area of book-shelves. His collection
— if it deserved the name — was piled in great heaps in
garrets, cellars, and warerooiiis, like unsorted goods.
They were accumulated, in fact, not so much that
the owner might have them, as that other people
might not. If there were a division of the order
into positive, or those who desire to make collec-
tions — and negative, or those who desire to prevent
them being made, his case would properly belong to
the latter. Imagine the consternation created in
a small circle of collectors by a sudden alighting
among them of a helluo librorum with such propen-
sities, armed with illimitable means, enabling him
to desolate the land like some fiery dragon ! , What
became of the chaotic mass of literature he had
brought together no one knew. It was supposed to
be congenial to his nature to have made a great
bonfire of it before he left the world ; but a little-
consideration showed such a feat to be impossible;)
for books may be burnt in detail by extraneous
assistance, but it is a curious fact that, combustible
as paper is supposed to be, books won't burn. If
you doubt this, pitch that folio Swammerdam or

Mighty 'Book-Hunters. 57

Puffendorf into a good rousing fire, and mark the
result.

No — it is probable that, stored away in some
forgotten repositories, these miscellaneous relics still
remain ; and should they be brought forth, some
excitement might be created ; for, ignorant as the
monster was, he had an instinct for knowing what
other people wanted, and was thus enabled to snatch
rare and curious volumes from the grasp of syste-
matic collectors. It was his great glory to get hold
of a unique book and shut it up. There were
known to be just two copies of a spare quarto
called Rout upon RoUt, or the Rabblers Rabbled,
by Felix Nixon, Gent. He possessed one copy ; the
other, by indomitable perseverance,-he also got hold
of, and then his heart was glad within him ; and he
felt It glow with well-merited pride when an accom-
plished scholar, desiring to coriiplete an epoch in
literary history ori which that book threw some
light, besought the owner to allow him a sight of
it, were it but for a few minutes, and the request
was refused. "I might as well ask him," said the
animal, who was rather proud of his firmness than
ashamed of his churlishness, "to make me a present
of his brains and reputation."

It was among his pleasant ways to attend book-
sales, there to watch the biddings of persons on
whose judgment he relied, and cut in as the contest
was becoming critical. This practice soon betrayed

58 His Nature.

to those he had so provoked the chinks in the
monster's armour. He was assailable and punish-
able at last, then, this potent tyrant — but the
attack must be made warily and cautiously. Ac-
cordingly, impartial bystanders, ignorant of the plot,
began to observe that he was degenerating by de-
grees in the rank of his purchases, and at last be-
coming utterly reckless, buying, at the prices of the
sublimest rarities, common works of ordinary litera-
ture to be found in every book-shop. Such was the
result of judiciously drawing hiip on, by biddings for
valueless books, on the part of those whom he had
outbid in the objects of their desire. Auctioneers
were surprised at the gradual change coming over
the book-market, and a few fortunate people ob-
taiiied considerable prices for articles they were
told to expect nothing for. But this farce, of course,
did not last long ; and whether or not he found out
that he had been beaten at his own weapons, the
devouring monster disappeared as mysteriously as
he had come.

Reminiscences. 59

UCH incidents bring vividly before the
eye the scenes in which they took place
long long ago. If any one in his early
youth has experienced some slight
symptoms of the malady under discussion, which
his constitution, through a tough struggle with the
world, and a busy training in after life, has been
enabled to throw off, he will yet look back with
fond associations to the scenes of his dangerous
indulgence. The auction-room is often the centre
of fatal attraction towards it, just as the billiard-
room and the rouge-et-noir table are to excesses of
another kind. There is that august tribunal over
which at one time reigned Scott's genial friend Bal-
lantyne, succeeded by the sententious Tait, himself
a man of taste and a collector, and since presided
over by the great Nisbet, whose hand has dropped
the ensign of office even before the present lot has
an opportunity of obtaining fronj it the .crowning
honour. I bow with deferential awe to the august
tribunal before which so vast a mass of literature has
changed hands, and where the future destinies of so
many thousands — or, shall it be rather saidj millions
— of volumes \z.y^& been (decided, e^ch carrying with
it its own little train of suspense apd triumph.
More congenial, however, in , my recollection, is

6o His Nature.

that remote and dingy hall where rough Carfrae,
like Thor, flourished his thundering hammer. There
it was that one first marked, with a sort of sym-
pathetic awe, the strange and varied influence of
their peculiar maladies on the book-hunters of the
last generation. There it was that one first handled
those pretty little pets, the Elzevir classics, a sort of
literary bantams^ which are still dear to memory,
and awaken old associations by their dwarfish ribbed
backs like those of ponderous folios, and their ex-
quisite, but now, alas ! too minute type. The eye-
sight that could formerly peruse them with ease
has suffered decay, but they remain unchanged ; and
in this they are unlike to many other objects of
early interest. Children, flowers, animals, scenery
eveih, all have undergone mutation, but no percep-
tible shade of change has passed over these little
reminders of old times.

There it was that one first could comprehend how
a tattered dirty fragment of a book once common
might be worth a deal more than its weight in gold.
There it was too, that, seduced by bad example, the
present respected pastor of Ardsnischen purchased
that beautiful Greek New Testament, by Jansen of
Amsterdam, which he loved so, in the freshness of
its acquisition, that he took it with him to church,
and, turning up the text, handed it to a venerable
woman beside^him, after the fashion of an absorbed
and absent student who was apt to forget whether

Reminiscences. 6 1

he was reading Greek or English. The presiding
genius of the place, with his strange : accent, odd
sayings, and angular motions, accompanied by good-
natured grunts of. grotesque wrath, became a sort
of household figure. The dorsal breadth of pronun-
ciation with which he would expose Mr Ivory's
Erskine, used to produce a titter which; he was
always at a loss to understand. Though not the
fashionable mart where all. the thorough libraries
in perfect, condition went to be hammered off —
though it was rather a place where miscellaneous
collections were sold, and therefore bargains might
be expected by those who knew what they were
about — yet sometimes extraordinary and valuable
collections of rare books came under his hammer,
and created an access of more than common excite-
ment among the denizens of the place. On one of
these occasions a succession of valuable fragments of
early English poetry brought prices so high and far
beyond those of ordinary expensive books in the
finest condition, that it seemed as if their imper-
fections were their merit ; and the auctioneer, mom-
entarily carried off with this feeling, when the high
prices began to sink a little, remonstrated thus,
" Going so low as thirty shillings, gentlemen, — this
curious book — so low as thirty shillings — and quite
imperfect !" • \ ■..''•

Those who frequented this howf, being generally
elderly men, have now nearly all departed- The

62 His Nature.

thunderer's hammer, too, has long been silenced by
the great quieter. One living memorial still exists
of that scfene — the genial and then youthful assist-
ant, whose partiality for letters and literary pursuits
made him often the monitor and kindly guide of the
raw student, and who now, in a higher field, exer-
cises a more important influence on the destinies of
litera:ture. I passed the spot the other day — it was
not desolate and forsaken, with the moss growing
on the hearthstone ; on the contrary, it flared with
many lights — a thronged gin-palace. When one
heard the sounds that issued from the old familiar
spot, the reflection not unnaturally occurred that,
after all, there are worse pursuits in the world than
book-hunting.

finaastficatton.

|ERHAPS it would be a good practical
distribution of the class of persons
under examination, to divide them into
private prowlers and auction -hunters.
There are many other modes of classifying them,
but none so general. They tnight be classified
by the different sizes of books they affect — as folios,
quartos, octavos, and duodecimos — but this would
be neither an expressive nor a dignified classifica-
tion. In enumierating the various orders to which

Clttsiification. 63

Fitzpatrick Smart did not belong, I have mentioned
marly of the species, but a great many more might
be added. Some collectors lay themselves out for
vellum -printed volumes almost solely. There are
such not only anrong very' old books, but among
very new ; for of a certain class of modern books
it frequently happens that a copy or two may be
printed on vellum, to catch the class whose weak-
ness takes that direction.

It may be cited as a signal itistance of the freaks
of book -collecting, that of all men in the world
Junot, the hard-fighting soldier, had a vellum library
— but so it was. It was sold in London for about
^£'1400. "The crown octavos," says Dibdin, "espe-
cially of ancient classics, and a few favburite English
authors, brought from four to six guineas. The first
virtually solid article of any importance, or rather
of the greatest importance, in the whole collection,
was the matchless Didot Horace, of 1799, folio,
containing the original • drawings from which the
exquisite copperplate vignettes were executed. This
was piurchased by the gallant Mr George Hibbert
for £,\ifi. Nor was it in any respect an extravagant
or even dear purchase." It now worthily adorns
the library of Norton Hall.

Some collectors may be styled Rubricists, being
influenced by a sacred rage for books having the
contents and marginal references printed in red ink.
Sonie "go at" flowered capitals, others at broad

64 His Nature.

margins. These have all a certain amount of mag-
nificence in their tastes ; but there are others again
whose priceless collections are like the stock-in-trade
of a wholesale ballad -singer, consisting of chap-
books, as they are termed — the articles dealt in by
pedlars and semi-mendicants for the past century or
two. Some affect collections relating to the drama,
and lay great store by heaps of play-bills arranged in
volumes, and bound, perhaps, in costly russia. Of
a more dignified grade are perhaps those who have
lent themselves to the collection of the theses on
which aspirants after university honours held their
disputations or impugnments. Sometimes out of a
great mass of rubbish of this kind the youthful
production of some man who has afterwards be-
come great turns up. Of these theses and similar
tracts a German, Count Dietrich, collected some
hundred and forty thousand, which are now in this
country.

Those collectors whose affections are invested in
the devices or trade emblems of special favourites
among the old printers must not be passed without
a word of recognition.

Men who have had the opportunity of rummaging
among old libraries in their boyhood are the most
likely to cultivate pets of this kind. There is a rich
variety of choice in the luxuriantly floral Gothic, the
cold serene classic, and that prolific style combining
both, which a popular writer on the .(Esthetics of

Classification. 65

Art has stigmatised by the term " sensual," ordering
all his votaries to abjure it accordingly. To intel-
lects not far enough advanced to acknowledge the
influence of such terms, or to comprehend their
application to what we should or should not like
and admire, there is a fortunate element even in
their deficiencies. They can admire the devices of
the old printers from association with the boyish
days when they were first noticed, from an absolute
likir^g for their fantastic fancies, and possibly from
an observation in some of them of the indications
of the gradual development of artistic purity and
beauty. In many of them in which the child has
seen only an attractive little picture, the man has
afterwards found a touch of poetic or religious
thought.

There is the hand pouring oil into a lamp of pure
Etruscan shape, symbolical of the nutriment sup-
plied to the intellectual flame. In another, the
gardener carefully plants the seedlings which are to
bear the fruit of, knowledge to the coming genera-
tions; in another, the sun rising, bright over the
eastern sea signifies the dawn of the restoration of
classical learning to the European nations.

Other interpretations of the kind, called quaint
conceits, can be read from these printers' devices.
There is Gesner's Biblibtheca swarming with frogs
and tadpoles like a quagmire in honour of its printer,
a German Frog, latinised Christopherus Froshoverus.

E

66 His Nature.

The Qu(B Extant of Varro, printed at Dort, are
adorned with many lively cuts of bears and their
good-humoured cubs, because the printer's name is
Joannis Berewout. So the Aulus Gellius, printed
by Gryphius of Lyons, more than a hundred years
earlier, begins and ends with formidable effigies
of griffins. The device of Michael and Phillip
Lenoir is a jet-black shield, with an Ethiopian for
crest, and Ethiopians for supporters ; and Apiarius
has a neat little cut representing a bear robbing a
bee's nest in a hollow tree. Most instructive of
them all, Ascensius has bequeathed to posterity the
lively and accurate representation, down to every
nail and screw, of the press in which the great
works of the sixteenth century were printed, with
the brawny pressman pulling his proof

Collectors there have been, not unimportant for
number and zeal, whose mission it is to purchase
books marked by peculiar mistakes or errors of the
press. The celebrated Elzevir Cassar of 1635 is
known by this, that the number of the 149th page
is misprinted 153. All that want this peculiar dis-
tinction are counterfeits. The little volume being,
as Brunet says, "une des plus jolies et plus rares
de la collection des Elsevier," gave a temptation to
fraudulent imitators, who, as if by a providential
arrangement for their detection, lapsed into accuracy
at the critical figure. How common errors are in
editions of the classics, is attested by the one or two

Classification, 67

editions which claim a sort of canonisation as im-
maculate — as, for instance, the Virgil of Didot, and
the Horace of Foulis. A collector, with a taste
for the inaccurate, might easily satiate it in the
editions so attractive in their, deceptive beauty of
the great Birmingham printer Baskerville.

The mere printers' blunders that have been com-
mitted upon editions of the Bible are reverenced in
literary history; and one edition — the Vulgate
issued under the authority of SixtusV. — achieved
immense value from its multitude of errors. The
well-known story of the German printer's wife, who
surreptitiously altered the passage importing that
her husband should be, her lord (Herr) so as to
make him be her fool (Narr), needs confirmation.
If such a misprint were found, it might quite nat-
urally be attributed to carelessness. Valarian Fla-
vigny, who had many controversies on his hand,
brought on the most terrible of them all with
Abraham Ecchellensis by a mere dropped letter.
In the rebuke about the mote in thy brother's
eye and the beam in thine own, the first letter in
the Latin for eye was carelessly dropped put, and
left a word which may be found occasionally in
Martial's Epigrams, but not in books of purer Latin
and purer ideas.^

1 A traditional anecdote represents the Rev. William Thomson,,
a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, ,as having got into a scrape
by a very indecorous ' alteration of a word in Scripture. 'A young

68 His Nature.

Questions as to typographical blunders in editions
of the classics are mixed up with larger critical
inquiries into the purity of the ascertained text, and
thus run in veins through the mighty strata of
philological and critical controversy which, from the
days of Poggio downwards, have continued to form
that voluminous mass of learning which the outer
world contemplates with silent awe.

To some extent the same spirit of critical inquiry
has penetrated into our own language. What we
have of it clusters almost exclusively around the
mighty name of Shakespeare. Shakespearian criti-

divine, on his first public appearance, had to read the solemn passage
in 1st Corinthians, "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not
all sleep, but we shall ajl be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling
of an eye, at the last trump." Thomson scratched the letter c out
of the word changed. The effect of the passage so mutilated can
easily be tested. The person who could play such tricks was ill
suited for his profession, and being relieved of its restraints, he found
a more congenial sphere of life among the unsettled crew of men of
letters in London, over whom Smollett had just ceased to reign. He
did a deal of hard work, and the world owes him at least one good
turn in his translation of Cunningham's Latin History of Britain from
the Revolution to the Hanover Succession. The value of this work,
in the minute light thrown by it on one of the most memorable periods
of British history, is too little known. The following extract may
give some notion of the curious and instructive nature of this neglected
book. It describes the influences which were in favour of the
French alliance, and against the Whigs, during Marlborough's cam-
paign. "And now I shall take this oppbrtunity to speak of the
French wine-drinkers as truly and briefly as I can. On the first
breaking out of the Confederate war, the merchants in England were
prohibited from all commerce vrith France, and a heavy duty was
laid upon French wine. This caused a grievous complaint among
the topers, who have great interest in the Parliament, as if they had

Classification. 69

cism is a branch of knowledge by itself. To record
its triumphs — from that greatest one by which the
senseless "Table of Greenfield," which interrupted
the touching close of Falstaff's days, was replaced
by "'a babbled of green fields" — would make a
large book of itself He who would undertake it,
in a perfectly candid and impartial spirit, would
give us, varied no doubt with much erudition and
acuteness, a curious record of blundering ignorance
and presumptuous conceit, the one so intermingling
with the other that it would be often difficult to
distinguish them.^

been poisoned by port wines. Mr Portman Seymour, who was a
jovial companion, and indulged his- appetites, but otherwise a good
man ; General Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough's brother, a man
of courage, but a lover of wine ; Mr Pereira, a Jew and smell-feast,
and other hard drinkers, declared, that the want of French wine ; was
not to be endured, and that they could hardly bear up under so great
a calamity. These were joined by Dr Aldridge, who, though nick-
named the priest of Bacchus, was otherwise an excellent man, and
adorned with all kinds of learning. Dr Ratcliffe, a physician of great
reputation, who ascribed the cause of all diseases to the want of
French wines, though he was very rich, and much addicted to wine,
yet, being extremely covetous, bought the cheaper wines ; but at the
same time he imputed the badness of his wine to the war, arid the
difficulty of getting better. Therefore the Duke of Beaufort and the
Earl of Scarsdale, two young noblemen of great interest among their
acquaintance, who had it in their power to live at their ease in magni-
ficence or luxury, merrily attributed all the doctor's complaints to his
avarice. All those were also for peace rather than war. And all the
bottle-companions, many physicians, and great numbers of the lawyers
and inferior clergy, and, in fine, the loose women too, were united
together in the faction against the Duke of Marlborough. " — ii. 200.

^ Without venturing too near to this very turbulent arena, where
hard words have lately been cast about with much reckless ferocity,

7© His Nature.

The quantity of typographical errors exposed in
those pages, where they are least to be expected,
and are least excusable, opens up some curious con-
siderations. It may surely be believed that, be-
tween the compositors who put the types together
and the correctors of the press, the printing of the
Bible has generally^ been executed with more than
average care. Yet the editions of the sacred book
have been the great mine of discovered printers'
blunders. The inference from this, however, is not
that blunders abound less in other literature, but
that they are not worth finding there. The issuing
of the true reading of the Scripture is of such
momentous consequence, that a mistake is sure of
exposure, like those minute incidents of evidence
which come forth when a murder has been com-
mitted, but would never have left their privacy for
the detection of a petty fraud.

The value to literature of a pure Shakespearian

I shall just offer one amended teading, because there is something
in it quite peculiar, and characteristic of its literary birthplace be-
yond the Atlantic. The passage operated upon is the wild soliloquy,
where Hamlet resolves to try the test of the play, and says —

" The devil hath power
T' assume a pleasing shape ; yea, and perhaps,
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits.
Abuses me to damn me. "

The amended reading stands —

"As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me too — damme. "

Classification. 7 "

text, has inspired the zeal of the detectives who
work on this ground. Some casual detections have
occurred in minor literature, — as, for instance, when
Akenside's description of the Pantheon, which had
been printed as "serenely great," was restored to
"severely great" The reason, however, why such
detections are not common in common books, is the
rather humiliating one that they are not worth
making. The specific weight of individual words
is in them of so little influence, that one does as well
as another. Instances could indeed be pointed out,
where an incidental blunder has much improved a
sentence, giving it the point which its author failed
to achieve — ^as a scratch or an accidental splash of
the brush sometimes supplies the painter with the
ray or the cloud which the cunning of his hand
cannot accomplish. Poetry in this way sometimes
endures the most alarming oscillations without being
in any way damaged, but, on the contrary, some-
times rather improved. I might refer to a signal
instance of this, where, by some mysterious accident
at press, the lines of a poem written in quatrains
got their order inverted, so that the second and
fourth of eaqh quatraiji changed places. This trans-
position was pronounced to operate a decided
improvement on the spirit and originality of the
piece, — an opinion in which, unfortunately, the
author did not concur ; nor could he appreciate
the compliment of a critic, who remarked that the

72 His Nature.

experiment tested the soundness of the lines, which
could find their feet whatever way they were thrown
about.^

There have been, no doubt, cruel instances of
printers' blunders in our own days, like the fate of
the youthful poetess in the Fudge family : —

"When I talked of the dewdrops on freshly-blown roses.
The nasty things printed it — freshly-blown noses."

Suchlike was the fatality which suddenly dried
up the tears of those who read a certain pathetic
ode, in which the desolate widow was printed as
" dissolute ; " and the accident which destroyed a
poetic reputation by making the "pale martyr in
his sheet of fire" come forward with "his shirt on
fire." So also a certain printer, whose solemn duty
it was to have announced to the world that " intoxi-
cation is folly," whether actuated by simplicity of
soul or by malignity, was unable to resist the faint

^ One curious service of printers' blunders, of a character quite
distinct from their bibliological influence, is their use in detecting
plagiarisms. It may seem strange that there should be any difficulty
in critically determining the' question, when the plagiarism is so close
as to admit of this test ; but there are pieces of very hard work in
science, tables of reference, and the like, where, if two people go
through the same work, they will come to the same conclusion. In
such cases, the prior worker has sometimes identified his own by a
blunder, as he Would a stolen china vase by a crack. ' Peignot com-
plains that some thirty or forty pages of his Dictionnaire Biblio-
graphique were incorpora,ted in the Si^cles Litteraires de la France,
"avec une exactitude si admirable, qu'on y a precieusement conserve
toutes les fautes typographiques. "

Classification. 73

amendment which announced the more genial doc-
trine that " intoxication is jolly." 1

A solid scholar there was, who, had he been called
to his account at a certain advanced period of his
career, might have challenged all the world to say-
that he had ever used a false quantity, or committed
an anomaly in syntax, or misspelt a foreign name,
or blundered in a quotation from a Greek or Latin
classic — to misquote an English author is a far
lighter crime, but even to this he could have pleaded
not guilty. He never made a mistake in a date, or
left out a word in copying the title-page of a volume ;
nor did he ever, in affording an intelligent analysis
of its contents, mistake the number of pages devoted
to one head. As to the higher literary virtues, too,
his sentences were all carefully balanced in a pair of
logical and rhetorical scales of the most sensitive
kind ; and he never perpetrated the atrocity of
ending a sentence with a monosyllable, or using the
same word twice within the same five lines, choos-
ing always some judicious method of circumlocution
to obviate reiteration. Poor man ! in the pride of
his unspotted purity, he little knew what a humilia-
tion fate had prepared for him. It happened to
him to have to state how Theodore Beza, or some
contemporary of his, went to sea in a Candian

^ See this and other cases in point set forth in an amusing article
on "Literary Mishaps," in Hedderwick's Miscellany, part ii.

74 His Nature.

vessel. This statement, at the last moment, when
the sheet was going through the press, caught the
eye of an intelligent and judicious corrector, more
conversant with shipping-lists than with the litera-
ture of the sixteenth century, who saw clearly what
had been meant, and took upon himself, like a man
who hated all pottering nonsense, to make the neces-
sary correction without consulting the author. The
consequence was, that people read with some sur-
prise, under the authority of the paragon of accuracy,
that Theodore Beza had gone to sea in a Canadian
vessel. The victim of this calamity had undergone
minor literary trials, which he had borne with philo-
sophical equanimity; as, for instance, when incon-
siderate people, destitute of the organ of veneration,
thoughtlessly asked him about the last new popular
work, as if it were something that he had read or
even heard of, and actually went so far in their
contumelious disrespect as to speak to him about
the productions of a certain Charles Dickens. The
"Canadian vessel/' however, was a more serious
disaster, and was treated accordingly. A charitable
friend broke his calamity to the author at a judicious
moment, to prevent him from discovering it himself
at an unsuitable time, with results the full extent of
which no one could foresee. It was an affair of
much anxiety among his friends, who made frequent
inquiries as to how he bore himself in his affliction,
and what continued to be the condition of his

Classification. 75

health, ^nd especially of his spirits. And although
he was a confirmed book-hunter, and not uncon-
scious of the merits of the peculiar class of books
now under consideration, it may be feared that it
was no consolation to him to reflect that, some
century or so hence, his books and himself would
be known only by the curious blunder which made
one of them worth the notice of the book-fanciers.
Consequences from printers' blunders of a still more
tragic character even than this, have been preserved
— as for instance, the fate of Guidi the Italian poet,
whose end is said to have been hastened by the
misprints in his poetical paraphrase of the Homilies
of his patron, Clement XI.

.An odd accident occurred to a well-known book
lately published, called Men of the Time. It some-
times happens in a printing-office that some of the
types, perhaps a printed line or two, fall out of
" the forme." Those in whose hands the accident
occurs generally try to put things to rights as well
as they ca.n, and may be very successful in restoring
appearances with the most deplorable results to the
sense. It happened thus in the instance referred
to. A few lines dropping out of the Life of Robert
Owen, the parallelogram Communist, were hustled,
as the nearest place of refuge, into the biography
of his closest alphabetical neighbour — "Oxford,
Bishop of" The consequence is that the article
begins as follows ; —

76 His Nature.

" Oxford, the Right Reverend Samuel
WiLBERFORCE, BiSHOP OF, was born in 1805. A
more kind-hearted and truly benevolent man does
not exist. A sceptic, as regards religious revelation,
he is nevertheless an out-and-out believer in spirit
movements."

Whenever this blunder was discovered, the leaf
was cancelled ; but a few copies of the book had
got into circulation, which some day or other may
be very valuable.

From errors of the press there is a natural transi-
tion to the class who incur the guilt of perpetrating
them, and whose peculiar mental qualities impart to
them their special characteristics. That mysterious
body called compositors, through whose hands all
literature passes, are reputed to be a placid and un-
impressionable race of practical stoics, who do their
work dutifully, without yielding to the intellectual
influences represented by it. A clause of an Act of
Parliament, with all its whereases, and be it enacteds,
and hereby repealeds, creates, it is said, quite as
much emotion in them as the most brilliant burst
of the fashionable poet of the day. They will set
you up a psalm or a blasphemous ditty with the
same equanimity, not retaining in their minds any
clear distinction between them. Your writing must
be something very wonderful indeed, before they
distinguish it from other " copy," except by the
goodness or badness of the hand. A State paper

Classification. "jy

which all the world is mad to know about, is quite
safe in a printing-office ; and, if report speak truly,
they will set up what is here set down of them,
without noting that it refers to themselves. It is
said that this stoic indifference is a wonderful
provision for the preservation of the purity of litera-
ture, and that, were compositors to think with the
author under the "stick," they might make dire
havoc.

We are not to suppose, however, that they take
less interest in, or are less observant of, the work
of their hands than other workmen. The point of
view, however, from which their observation is
taken, is not exactly the same as that of their
co-operator, the author whose writing they set up,
nor, is their notification of specialties of a kind
which would always be felt by him as complimen-
tary. The tremendous philippic of Junius Brutus
against the scandalous and growing corruptions of
the age, is remembered in the "chapel" solely be-
cause its fiery periods exhausted the largest font of
italics possessed by the establishment. The exhaus-
tive inquiry by a great metaphysician into the Quan-
tification of the predicate, is solely associated with
the characteristic fact that the press was stopped
during the casting of an additional hundredweight
of parentheses for its special use. A youthful poet
I could recall, who, with a kind of exulting indig-
nation, thought he had discovered a celebrated

78 His Nature.

brother of the lyre appropriating his ewe lamb in
a flagrant plagiarism. There was at least one man
who had the opportunity of being acquainted with
the productions of his unappreciated muse — the
printer. To him, accordingly, he appealed for con-
firmation of his suspicions, demanding if he did
not see in the two productions a similarity that in
some places even approached identity. The referee
turned over page after page with the scrupulous
attention of one whose acuteness is on trial. After
due deliberation he admitted that there was a very
striking similarity, only it seemed to him that the
other's brevier was a shade thinner in the hair-stroke'
than his own, and the small caps, would go a thought
more to the pound ; while as to the semicolons and
marks of interrogation, they looked as if they came
out of a different font altogether.

It is pleasant to be remembered for something,
and the present author has the assurance that these
pages will be imprinted on the memory of the
''chapel" by the decorated capitals and Gothic de-
vices with which a better taste than his own has
strewed them. The position, indeed, conceded to
him in the book - hunting field through the in-
fluence of these becoming decorations has com-
municated to him something of the uneasiness of
Juvenal's

" Miserum est alioium incubere famse,
Ne coUapsa ruant subductis tecta columnis."

Classification. 79

And having so disburdened himself, he rejoices in
the thought that whoever compliments him again
on the taste and talent displayed in the printing
and adorning of this volume, will only prove that
he has not read it.

Returning to compositors, and what they note and
do not note, if the fresh author has happened to feel
it a rather damping forecast of his reception by the
public that those who have had the first and closest
contact with his efforts are not in any way aroused
by their remarkable originality, yet one who may
have had opportunities of taking a wide view of the
functions of the compositor will not wonder that,
like the deaf adder, he systematically closes his ear
to the voice of the charmer.

That the uninitiated reader may form some prac-
tical- conception of my meaning, I propose to set
-down a few items froni the weekly contents of a
compositor's "bill-book," slightly enlarging his brief
entries with the view of rendering them the more
intelligible.

" I. A time job — viz., inserting, as per author's
proof, 50 'hear hears' and 20 'great cheerings' in
report of speech to be delivered by Alderman Nod-
dles at the great meeting on the social system.
. "2. Picking out all the 'hear hears' and 'great
•cheerings' from said speech, in respect it was not
permitted to be delivered, the meeting having dis-
persed when the alderman stood up ; and breaking

8o His Nature.

up the same into pages, with title, ' A plan for the
immediate and total extirpation of intemperance by
prohibiting the manufacture of bottles.'

"3. A sheet of a volume of poems, titled 'Life
thoughts by a Life thinker,' beginning —

" ' Far I dipt beneath the surface, through the texture of the earth,
Till my heart's triumphant musings dreamt the dream of that new

birth.
When the engineer's deep science through the mighty sphere shall

probe,
And the railway trains to Melbourne sweep the centre of the globe,
And the electro-motive engine renders it no more absurd
That a human being should be in two places like a bird.'

"Item — Introduction, explaining the difficulties
in the way of the poet's success, in an age devoted
to forms and superficialities, by reason of his mus-
cular originality, impulsive grasping at the infinite,
and resolute disdain of popular and conventional
models ; but expressing opinion that, as he turns
round on the pivot of his own individual idiosyn-
crasy, he will come out all right

" 4. Advertisement by a disinterested draper, be-
ginning, 'awful sacrifices,' and ending, 'early appli-
cation necessary to prevent disappointment.'

" 5. Two sticks of prayer for a devotional work
which has had an unexpected run, and is largely
distributed over the office for an expeditious issue
of a new edition.

"6. Part of an accountant's report, containing
45 schemes for the ranking of the creditors on ten

Classification. 8 1

bankrupt estates, each of which has drawn accom-
modation bills on all the others.

"7. Signature YY of 'A treatise on the form .and
material of the sickle used by the Welsh Druids in
cutting the mistletoe,' being a series of quotations
in Arabic, Hindoo, Greek, German, and Gaelic,
cemented together by thin lines of English. This
is a stock job which keeps the office going like a
balance-wheel when there is nothing else specially
pressing, and is rather popular, as it contains a good
many ethnological and etymological, tables, implying
scheme-work, which the compositors who are adepts
in that department contemplate with great satisfac-
tion as they put it together."

It is surely pleasant to suppose that the corn-
positor has acquired the faculty of passing such
dizzying whirls of heterogeneous element^ without
absorbing them .all, and that, when his day's labour
is over, he may find his own special intellectual food,
in his Milton or his Locke. In this view, his apathy
to the literary matter passing through his hands
may be contemplated as among the special benefi-
cences Jn: the provi^pntjal order of thir^gs, Hke the
faculty of healthy vitality to throw off morbid in-
fluences ; and perhaps it has still closer analogy to
that professional coolness which separg.tes the sur-
geon from a nervous sympathy with the: sufferings of
those on whom he operates — a phenomenon which,
though sometimes denounced as professional callous-

F

82 His Nature.

ness, is one of the most beneficent specialties in the
lot of mankind.

In the several phases of the book-hunter, he
whose peculiar glory it is to have his books illus-
trated — the Grangerite, as he is technically termed
— must not be omitted. "Illustrating" a volume
consists in inserting in or binding up with it por-
traits, landscapes, and other works of art bearing
a reference to its contents. This is materially dif-
ferent from the other forms of the pursuit, in as far
as the quarry hunted down is the raw material, the
finished article being a result of domestic manufac-
ture. The Illustrator is the very Ishmaelite of col-
lectors — his hand is against every man, and every
man's hand is against him. He destroys unknown
quantities of books to supply portraits or other illus-
trations to a single volume of his own ; and as it is
not always known concerning any book that he has
been at work on it, mahy a common book -buyer has
cursed him on inspecting his own last bargain, and
finding that it is deficient in an interesting portrait
or two. Tales there are, fitted to make the blood
run cold in the veins of the most sanguine book-
hunter, about the devastations committed by those
who are gi-\lren over to this' special pursuit It is
generally understood that they received the impulse
which has rendered them an important sect, from
the publication of Granger's Biographical History —
hence their name of Grangerites. So it has hap-

Classification. 83

pened that this industrious aijd respectable com-
piler is contemplated with mysterious awe as a sort
of literaiy Attila or Gengis Khcin, who has spread
terror and ruin aj-ound ,hini. In truth the illustra-
tor, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that
doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to becQine
■excited with his work, and to go op ever widening
the circle of bis purveyances, and opening new
avenues toward the raw material on which he works.
To show how widely such, a person may levy contri-
butionsj I propose to take, not a whole volume, not
-even a whole page, but still, a specific and distin-
guished piece of English literature, and: describe
the way in which a devotee of this peculiar practice
would naturally proceed in illustrating it. The
piece of literature to be illustrated is as follows : —

" How doth the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour,
And gather honey all the day
From every opening flfower ! "

The first thing to be done is to collect every
engraved portrait of the author, Isaac Watts. The
next, to get hold of any engravings of the house in
which he was , born, or houses in which he lived.
Then will come all kinds of views of Southampton
—of its Gothic gatCj and its older than Gothic walli
Any scrap connected with the inauguration of the
Watts statue, must of course be scrupulously gath-
ered. To go but a step beyond such commonplaces

84 His Nature.

— there is a traditional story about the boyhood of
Isaac which has been told as follows. He took
precociously to rhyming : like Pope, he lisped in
numbers, for the numbers came. It happened that
this practice was very offensive to his father, a
practical man, who, finding his admonitions useless,
resolved to stop it in an effectual manner. He ac-
cordingly, after the practice of his profession — -being
a schoolmaster — assailed with a leathern thong, duly
prepared, the cuticle of- thiat portion of the body
which has from time immemorial been devoted to
such inflictions. Under torture, the divine songster
abjured his propensity in the following very hopeful

shape —

' ' Oh, father, da some pity take,,
And I will no more verses make."

It is not likely_ that ,this simple domestic scene
has been engraved either for the Divine Hymns, or
the Improvement of the Mind. The illustrator will
therefore require to get a picture of it for his own
special use, and will add immensely to the value of
his treasure, while he gives scope to the genius of
a Cruikshank or a Doyle. 1 „■

We are ' yet, it will be observed, only on the
threshold: We have next to' illustrate the sub-
stance of the poetry. All kinds of engravings of
bees Attic and other, and of bec'hives, will be ap-
propriate, and will be followed by portraits of Huber
and other great writers on bees, and views of Mount

Classification. <85

Hybla and other honey districts. Spme Scripture
prints illustrative , of the history of Samson, who
had to do with honey a,nd bees, will be appropriate,
as well as any illustrations of the fable of the Bear
and the Bees, or of the .Roman story of the Sic
vos non vobis. A still more appropriate form of
illustration may, however, be drawn upon by. re-
membering that a periodijcal called The, Bee was
edited by Dr Anderson ; and it is important to
observe that the name was adopted in, the very
-Spirit which inspired Watts.; In , both instances the
most respected of all winged insects was, broijght
forward as;the type of industry. PortraitSj then, of
Dr Anderson^ and aiiy engravings- that can be con-
nected with himself and his pursuits, will have their
place in the polleption.; It will occur, perhaps, to
the intelligent: illi|strator, that Dr Anderson was the
grandfather of Sir James Outram, and, he will thus
have the satisfaction > of opening his ; collection for
all illustrations of the career of that distinguished
officer. Having been aptly called the Bayard of the
-Indian service, the collector, who has exhausted him
and , his; services willbg, justified by the principles
of the craft in following up the chase, and pick-
ing up any wpodjcuts or engravings referring to the
death of the false Bourbon, or any other scene in the
career of the kijight; withQUt fear or repro.ach." Here,
by a fortunate "and interesting coincidence, through
the Bourbons the collector getsi at the swarms of

86 His Nature.

bees which distinguish the insignia of royalty in
France. When the illustrator comes to the last
line, which invites him to add to what he has
already collected a representation of " every open-
ing flower," it is easy to see that he has indeed
a rich garden of delights before him.

In- a classification of book-hunters, the aspirants
after large-paper copies deserve special notice, were
it only for the purpose of guarding against a com-
mon fallacy which confounds them with the lovers
of talt copies. The' difference is fundamental, large-
paper copies being created by system, while tall copies
are merely the creatures of accident; and Dibdin
bestows due castigation in a celebrated instance in
which a mere tall copy had, whether from ignorance
or design, beeli spoken "of as a large-paper copy. This
high development of the desirable book is the result of
ah arrartgemeint to print so many copies of a volume
on paper of larger size than that of the bulk of the
impression. The tall dopy is the result of careful
cutting by the binder, or of no cutting at all. In this
primitive shape a book has separate charms for a dis-
tinct class of collectors who esteem rough edges, and
are willing, for the sakeiof this excellence, to endure
the martyrdom of cohsulting books in that condition.^

^ "But devions oft, from ev'ry classic muse^
TJiiekeencqlHeietorme^^iei; paths will choose:
And first the margin's breadth his soul employs,
Pure,- snow^, broad, the tyjie of nobler joys.

Classification. 87

The historian of the private libraries of New
York makes us acquainted with a sect well known
in the actually sporting world, but not heretofore
familiar in the bibliological. Here is a description
of the Waltoniani library of the Reverend ,Dr
Bethune. In the sunshine he is a practical angler,
and —

"During the darker seasons of the year, when
forbidden the actual use of his rod, our friend has
occupied himself with excursions through sale cata-
logues, fishing out from their dingy pages whatever
tends to honour his favourite author or favourite
art, so that his spoils now number nearly five hun-
dred volumes, of all sizes and dates.. Pains have
been takeii to have not only copies of the works
included in the list, 'but also the several editions ;
and when it is of a work mentioned by Walton, an
edition which the good old man himself ^ay have
seen. Thus the collection has all the editions of
Walton, Cotton, and Venables in existence, and,
with 'few exceptions, all the works referred to by
Walton, or which tend to illustrate his favourite
rambles by the Lea or the Dove. Every scrap of

Ini vain might Homer roll the tide of song, ^

Or Horace smile, or T.uUy charm the throng ;

If, crost by Pallas' ire, the trenchant blade.

Or too oblique, or near the edge, invade,

The Bibliomane exclaims, with h^gard eye,

' No margin ! '^urns in haste, and scorns to biiy.''

— Ferriar's Bibliomania, v. 34-43.

88 His Nature.

Walton's writing, and every compliment paid to
him, have been carefully gathered and garnered up,
with prints and autographs and some precious
manuscripts. Nor does the department end here,
but embraces most of the older and many of the
modern writers on ichthyology and angling."

9Kie Profeler anb tfie ^urtumif^aonter.

HESE incidental divisions are too nu-
merous and complex for a proper
classification of book-hunters, and I
am inclined to go back to the idea
that their most effective and comprehensive division
is into the private prowler and the auction-haunter.
The difference between these is something like, in
the sporting world, that between the stalker and
the hunter proper. Each function has its merits,
and calls for its special qualities and sacrifices. The
one demands placidity, patience, caution, plausibility,
and unwearied industry — such attributes as those
which have been already set forth in the words of
the Antiquary. The auction - room, on the other
hand, calls forth courage, promptness, and the spirit
of adventure. There is. wild work sometimes there,
and men find themselves carried off by enthusiasm
and competition towards pecuniary sacrifices which
at the threshold of the temple they had solemnly

The Auction- Haunter. 89

vowed to themselves to eschew. But such sacrifices
are the tribute paid to the absorbing interest of the
pursuit, and are looked upon in their own peculiar
circle as tending to the immortal honour of those
who make them. This field of prowess has, it is
said, undergone a prejudicial change in these days,
the biddings being nearly all by dealers, while
gentlemen -collectors are gradually moving out of
the field. In old days one might have reaped for
himself, by bold and emphatic biddings at a few
auctions, a niche in that temple of fame, of which
the presiding deity is Dr Frognal Dibdin — a name
familiarly abbreviated into that of Foggy Dibdin.
His descriptions of auction contests are perhaps the
best and most readable portions of his tremendously
overdone books. . ,

Conspicuous beyond all others stands forth the
sale of the ,Roxburghe library, perhaps the most
eminent contest of that kind on record. There
were of it some ten ' thpusand; separate " lots," as
auctioneers call them, and almost every one of them
was a book of rank and mark in the eyes of the
collecting community, and had been, with special
pains aiid care and anxious exertion, drawn into the
vortex of that, collection. Although it was created
by a Duke, yet it. has been rumoured that most of
the books, had bee^ bargains, and that the nQble
-collector drew; .largely on the spirit of patient per-
iseverance and enlightened sagacity for which Monk-

90 His Nature.

barns claims credit. The great passion and pursuit
of his life having been of so peculiar a character-
he was almost as zealous a hunter of deer and wild
swans, by the way, as of books, but this was not
considered in the least peculiar — it was necessary
to iind some strange influencing motive for his con-
duct ; so it has been said that it arose from his
having been crossed in love in his early youth.
Such crosses, in general, arise from the beloved one
dying, or proving faithless and becoming the wife
of another. It was, however, the peculiarity of the
Duke's misfortune, that it arose out of the illustri-
ous marriage of the sister of his elected. She was
the eldest daughter of the Duke of Mecklenburg-
Strelitz. Though purchased by a sacrifice of regal
rank, yet there would be many countervailing ad-
vantages in the position of an affluent British
Duchess which might reconcile a young lady, even
of so illustrious a descent, to the sacrifice, had it not
happened that Lord' Bute and the Princess of Wales
selected her younger sister to be the wife of George
III. and the Queen of Great Britain, long known as
the good Queen Charlotte. Then there arose, it
seems, the necessity, as a matter of st^te and politi-
cal etiquette, that the elder sister should abandon
the alliance with a British subject.

So, at all events, goes the story of the origin of
the Duke'S; bibliomania ; and it is supposed to havte
been in the thoughts of Sir Walter Scott, when he

The A uction- Haunter. 9 \

said of him that "youthful misfortunes, of a kind
against which neither wealth nor rank possess a
talisman, cast an early shade of gloom over his
prospects,' and gave to one splendidly endowed
with the means of enjoying society that degree of
reserved melancholy which prefers retirement to the
splendid scenes of gaiety." Dibdin, with more
specific precision, after, ranibling over the house
where the great auction sale occurred) as inquisitive
people are apt to do, tells us of the solitary room
occupied by the Duke, close to his library, in which
he slept and died : " all his migrations," says the
bibliographer, "were confined to these two rooms.
When Mr Nichol showed me the very bed on which
this bibliomaniacal Duke had expired, I felt — as I
trust I ought to have felt on the occasion." Scott
attributed to an incidental occurrence at his father's
table the direction given lo, the great pursuit of
: his life.' " Lord Oxford and Lord Sunderland, both
famous collectors of the time, dined one .day with
the second Duke of Roxburghe, when their conver-.
sation happened to turn upon th.e editio princeps
of Boccaccio, printed in Venice in 1474, and so rare
that its very existence was doubted of". It so fh.ap-
pened that the Duke rernembered this volume hav-
ing been offered to him for slf 100, and he believed.
he could still trace and secure it : he did so, and.
laid it before his admiring friends at a subsequent,,
sitting. " His son, then^ Marquess of Bowmont,,

92 His Nature.

never forgot the little scene upon this occasion, and
used to ascribe to it the strong passion which he
ever afterwards felt for rare books and editions, and
which rendered him one of the most assiduous and
judicious collectors that ever formed a sumptuous
library." ^ And this same Boccaccio was the point
of attack which formed the climax in the great con-
test of the Roxhurghe roup, as the Duke's fellow-
countrynien called it. I am not aware that any
of the English bibliographers have alluded to any
special cause for this volume's extreme rarity.
Peignot attributes it to a sermon preached by the
Italian pulpit orator Savonarola, on the 8th of
February 1497, against indecorous books, in conse-
quence of which the' inhabitants of Florence made
a bonfire of their Boccacdios, — an explanation which
every one who pleases is at liberty to believe.^

The historian of the contest terms it " the Water-
loo among book-battles," whereto "many a knight
came far and wide froiil his retirement, and many
an unfledged combatant left his father's castle to
partake of the glory of such a; contest" He also
tells us that, the honour of the first effective shot
was due to a. house in the trade — Messrs Payne and
Foss — by whom " the Aldine Greek Bible was killed
off the first in the contests It produced the sum of

^ Article on Pitcairn's CrimiQal Trials, in the 2ist vol. of Mis-
cellaneous Prose Works.
^ Predicatoriana, p. 23.

The Auction-Haunter. 93

;^4, 14s. 6d. Thus measuredly, and guardedly, and
even fearfully, did this tremendous battle begin."
The earliest brilliant affair seems to have come off
when Lord Spencer bought two Caxtons for ;^24S,
a feat of which the closing scene is recorded, with
a touching simplicity, in these terms : — " His Lord-
ship put each volume under his coat, and walked
home with them in all the flush of victory and con-
sciousness of triumph." As every one does not
possess a copy of the three costly volumes of which
the Bibliographical Decameron consists — and, fur-
ther, as many a one so fortunate as to possess them
has not had patience and perseverance enough to
penetrate to the iniddle of the third volume, where
the most readable 1 part is to be found^^a character-
istic extract, describing the heat of the contest, may
not be unwelcome :—

"For two -and -forty successive days- — with the
exceptiorl only of Sundays — were the voice and
hammer of Mr Evans heai'd with equal efficacy in
the dining-room of the late Duke, which had been
appropriated to the vendition of the books ; and
within that same space (some thirty -five feet by
twenty) were such deeds of valour performed, and
such feats of book-heroism achieved, as had never
been previously beheld, and of which the like will
probably never be seen again. The shouts of the
victors and the groans of the vanquished stunned
and appalled you as you entered. The striving and

94 His Nature.

press, both of idle spectators and determined bid-
ders, was unprecedented. A sprinkling of Caxtons
and De Wordes marked the first day, and these
were obtained at high, but, comparatively with the
subsequent sums given, moderate prices. Theology,
jurisprudence, philosophy, and philology chiefly
marked the earlier days of this tremendous contest ;
and occasionally during these days, there was much
stirring up of courage, and' many hard and heavy
blows were interchanged ; and the combatants may
be said to have completely wallowed themselves in
the conflict. At length came poetry, Latin, ItaHan^
and French: a steady fight yet continued to be
fought ; victory seemed to hang in doubtful scales
— sometimes- on the one, sometimes on the other
side of Mr Evans, who preserved throughout (as it
was his bounden duty to preserve) a uniform, im-
partial, and steady course; and who maybe said
on that occasion, if not ' to have rode the whirlwind,'
at least to have ' directed the storm.' "

But the dignity and power of the historian's nar-
rative cannot be fully appreciated until we find him
in the midst of the climax of the contest — the battle,
which gradually merged into a single combat, for
the possession of the Venetian Boccaccio. Accord-
ing to the established historical practice, we have in
the' first place a statement of the position taken up
by the respective " forces."

"At length the moment of sale arrived. Evans

The Auction- Haunter. 95

prefaced the putting-up of the article by an appro-
priate oration, in which he expatiated on its extreme
rarity, and concluding by informing the company of
the regret, and even anguish of heart, expressed by
Mr Van Praet that such a treasure was not to be
found in the Imperial collection at Paris. Silence
followed the address of Mr Evans. On his right
hand, leaning against the wall, stood Earl Spencer ;
a little lower down, and standing at right angles
with his Lordship, appeared the Marquess of Bland-
ford. Lord Althorp stood a little backward, to the
right of his father. Earl Spencer."

The iirst movement of the forces g=ives the histo-
rian an opportunity of dropping a withering sneer
at an unfortunate man, so provincial in his notions
as to suppose that a hundred, pounds or two would
be of any avail in such a contest.

" The honour of firing the first shot was due to a
gentleman of Shropshire, unused to this species of
warfare, and who seemed to recoil from the rever-
beration of the report himself had made. 'One
hundred guineas,' he exclaimed. Again a pause
ensue4 ; but anon the biddings rose rapidly to five
hundred guineas. Hitherto, however, it was evident
that the firing was but masked and desultory. At
length all random shots ceased, and the champions
before named stood gallantly up to each other, re-
solving not to flinch from a trial of their respective
strengths. A thousand guineas were bid, by Earl

96 His Nature.

Spencer — to which the Marquess added ten. You
might have heard a pin drop. All eyes were turned
-rr-all breathing wellnigh stopped — revety, sword was
put home within its scabbard — and not a piece of
steel was seen to move or to glitter except that
which each of these champions brandished in his
valorous hand."

But even this exciting sort of narrative will tire
one when it goes on page after page, so that we
must take a leap to the conclusion. "Two thousand
two hundred and fifty pounds," said Lord Spencer.
" The spectators were now absolutely electrified.
The Marquess quietly adds his usual ten" and so
there an end. "Mr Evans, ere his hammer fell,
made a short pause — and indeed, as if by something
preternatural, the ebony instrument itself seemed to
be charmed or suspended in the mid air. However,
at last down dropped the hammer."

Such a result naturally created excitement beyond
the book -collectors' circle,' for here was an actual
stroke of trade in which a profit of more than two
thousand per cent had been netted. It is easy to
believe in Dibdin's statement of the crowds of people
who imagined they were possessors of the identical
Venetian Boccaccio, and the still larger number who
wanted to do a stroke of business with some old
volume, endowed with the same rarity and the same
or greater intrinsic vialue. The general excitement
created by the dispersal of the Roxburghe collection

The Auction- Haunter. 97

proved an epoch in literary history, by the estab-
lishment of the Roxburghe Club, followed by a
series of others, the history of which has to be told
farther on.

Of the great bopk- sales that have been com-
memorated, it is curious to observe how seldom
they embrace ancestral libraries accumulated in old
houses from generation to generation, and how gen-
erally they markr the short-lived duration of the accu-
mulations of some collector freshly deposited. One
remarkable- exception to this was in the Gordon-
stoun library, sold in 1816. It was begun by Sir
Robert Gordon, a Morayshire laird of the time of
the great civil wars of the seventeenth century.
He was the author of the History of the Earldom
of Sutherland, and a man of great political as well
as literary account He laid by heaps of the pam-
phlets, placards, and- other documents of his stormy
period, and thus many a valuable morsel, which
had otherwise disappeared from the world^^ left a
representative in the Gordonstoun collection. It
was increased by a later Sir Robert, who had the
reputation of being a vvizard. He beloiiged to one
of those terrible clubs from which Satan is entitled
to take a victim annually ; but when Gordon's turn
came, he managed to get off with merely the loss
of his shadow ; a^nd many a Morayshire peasant has
testified to having seen him riding forth, on a sunny
day, the shadow of his horse visible, with those of

G

98 His Nature.

his spurs and his whip, but his body offering no
impediment to the rays of the sun. He enriched
the library with books on necromancy, demonology,
and alchemy.

The largest book-sale probably that ever was in
the world, was that of Heber's collection in 1834.
There are often rash estimates made of the size of
libraries, but those who have stated the number of
his books in six figures seem justified when one
looks at the catalogue of the sale, bound up in five
thick octavo volumes. For results so magnificent,
Richard Heber's library had but a small beginning,
according to the memoir of him in the Gentleman's
Magazine, where it is said, that "having one day
accidentally met with a little volume called The
Vallie of Varietie, by Henry Peacham, he took it to
the late Mr Bindley of the Stamp-office, the cele-
brated collector, and asked him if this was not a
curious book. Mr Bindley, after looking at it,
answered, 'Yes — not very^but rather a curious
book.'" This faint morsel of encouragement was,
it seems, sufficient to start him in his terrible career,
and the trifle becomes important as a solemn illus-
tration of the obsia principiis. His labours, and
even his perils, were on a par with those of any
veteran commander who has led armies and fought
battles during the great part of a long life. He
would set off on a journey of several hundred miles
any day in search of a book not in his collection!

The Auction- Haunter. 99

Sucking in from all around him whatever books were
afloat, he of course soon exhausted the ordinary
market; and to find a book obtainable which he
did not already possess, was an event to be looked
to with the keenest anxiety, and a chance to be
seized with promptitude^ courage, and decision. At
last, however, he could not supply the cravings of
his appetite without recourse to duplicates, and far
more than duplicates. His friend Dibdin said of
him, " He has now and then an ungovernable pas-
sion to possess more copies of a book than there
were ever parties to a deed or stamina to a plant ;
and therefore I cannot call him a duplicate or a
triplicate collector." He satisfied his own con-
science by adopting a creed, which he enounced
thus : " Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably
do without three copies of a book. One he must
have for a show copy, and he will probably keep it
at his country-house ; another he will require for
his own use and reference ; and unless he is inclined
to part with this, which is very inconvenient, or
risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs have
a third at the service of his friends."

This last necessity is the key-note to Heber's
popularity : he was a liberal and kindly man, atid
though, like Wolsey, he was unsatisfied in getting,
yet, like him, in bestowing he was most princely.
Many scholars and authors obtained the raw mate-
rial for their labours from his transcendent stores.

lOO His Nature.

These, indeed, might be said less to be personal to
himself than to be a feature in the literary geography
of Europe. " Some years ago," says the writer in
the Gentleman's Magazine, " he built a new libraiy
at his house at Hodnet, which is said to be full.
His residence at Pimlico, where he died, is filled,
like Magliabechi's at Florence, with books, from the
top to the bottom — every chair, every table, every
passage containing piles of erudition. He had
another house in York Street, leading to Great
James's Street, Westminster, laden from the ground-
floor to the garret with curious books. He had a
library in the High Street, Oxford, an immense
library at Paris, another at Antwerp, another at
Brussels, another at Ghent, and at other places in
the Low Countries and in Germany."

^

^^^^SBiiin^^

^^^^^

i^^^wir^^^^^

^^^^^

PART II.— HIS FUNCTIONS.

Wl)e f^ttfihg.

jlAVING devoted the preceding pages
to the diagnosis of the book-hunter's
condition, or, in other words, to the
different shapes which the pheno-
mena peculiar to it assume, I now
propose to offer some account of his place in the
dispensations of Providence, which will probably
show that he is not altogether a mischievous or
a merely useless member of the human family, but
does in reality, however unconsciously to himself,
minister in his own peculiar way to the service both
of himself and others. This is to be a methodical
discourse, and therefore to be divided and subdi-
vided, insomuch that, taking in the first place his
services to himself, this branch shall be subdivided
into the advantages which are purely material and
those which are properly intellectual.

I02 His Functions.

And, first, of material advantages. Holding it to
be the inevitable doom of fallen man to inherit some
frailty or failing, it would be difficult, had he a
Pandora's box-ful to pick and choose among, to
find one less dangerous or offensive. As the judicious
physician informs the patient suffering under some
cutaneous or other external torture, that the poison
lay deep in his constitution — that it must have
worked in some shape — and well it is that it has
taken one so innocuous — so may even the book-
hunter be congratulated on having taken the innate
moral malady of all the race in a very gentle and
rather a salubrious form. To pass over gambling,
tippling, and other practices which cannot be easily
spoken of in good society, let us look to the other
shapes in which man lets himself out — ^far instance
to horse-racing, hunting, photography, shooting, fish-
ing, cigars, dog-fancying, dog-fighting, the ring, the
cockpit, phrenology, revivalism, socialism ; which of
these contains so small a balance of evil, counting of
course that the amount of pleasure conferred is equal
— for it is only on the datum that the book-hunter
has as much satisfaction from his pursuit as the fox-
hunter, the photographer, and so on, has in his, that
a fair comparison can be struck? These pursuits,
one and all, leave little or nothing that is valuable
behind them, except, it may be, that some of them
are conducive to health, by giving exercise to the
body and a genial excitement to the mind ; but

The Hobby. 103

every hobby gives the latter, and the former may
be easily obtained in some other shape. They leave
little or nothing behind — even the photographer's
portfolio will bring scarcely anything under the
harrimer after the death of him whose solace and
pursuit it had been, should the positives remain
visible, which may be doubted. And as to the
other enumerated pursuits, some of them, as we all
know, are immensely costly, all unproductive as
they are.

But the. book-hunter may possibly leave a little
fortune behind him. His hobby, in fact, merges
into an investrhent. This is the light in which a
celebrated Quaker collector of paintings put his con-
duct, when it wtas questioned by the brethren, in
virtue of that right to admonish one another con-
cerning the errors of their ways, which makes them
so chary in employing domestic servants of their
own persuasion. " What ' had the brother paid for
that bauble [a picture by Wouvermans], for in-
stance?" "Well, ;^300.". "Was not that then an
awful wasting of his substance on vanities?" "No.
He had been offered ;f 900 for it. If any of the
Friends was prepared to offer him a better invest-
ment of his money than one that could be realised
at a profit of 200: per cent, he was ready to alter the
existing disposal of his capital."

It is true that amateur purchasers do not, in the
long-run, make a profit, though an occasional bar-

I04 His Functions.

gain may pass through their hands. It is not main-
tained that, in the general case, the libraries of
collectors would be sold for more than they cost, or
even for nearly so much ; but they' are always worth
something, which is more than can be said of the
residue of other hobbies and pursuits. Nay, farther;
the scholarly collector of books is not like the or-
dinary helpless amateur ; for although, doubtless,
nothing will rival the dealer's instinct for knowing
the money-value of an article, though he may know
nothing else about it, yet there is often a subtle
depth in the collector's educated knowledge which
the other cannot match, and bargains may be ob-
tained off the counters of the most acute.

A small sprinkling of these — even the chance of
them — excites him, like the angler's bites and rises,
and gives its zest to his pursuit. It is the reward
of his patience, his exertion, and his skill, after the
manner in which Monkbarns has so well spoken ;
and it is certain that, in many instances, a collector's
library has sold for more than it cost him.

No doubt, a man may ruin himself by purchas-
ing costly books, as by indulgence in any other
costly luxury, but the chances of calamity are com-
paratively small in this pursuit A thousand pounds
will go a great way in book-collecting, if the collec-
tor be true to the traditions of his pursuit, such as
they are to be hereafter expounded. There has
been one instance, doubtless, in the records of bib-

The Hobby. 105

liomania, of two thousand pounds having been given
for one book. But how many instances far more
flagrant could be found in picture-buying? Look
around upon the world and see how many men
are the victims of libraries, and compare them with
those whom the stud, the kennel, and the preserve
have brought to the Gazette. Find out, too, any-
where, if you can, the instance in which the money
scattered in these forms comes back again, and
brings with it a large profit, as the expenditure
of the Duke of Roxburghe did when his library
was sold.

But it is necessary to arrest this train of argu-
ment, lest its tenor might be misunderstood. The
mercenary spirit must not be admitted to a share in
the enjoyments of the book-hunter. If, after he
has taken his last survey of his treasures, and spent
his last hour in that quiet library, where he has
ever found his chief solace against the wear and
worry of the world, the book-hunter has been
removed to his final place of rest, and it is then
discovered that the circumstances of the family
require his treasures to be dispersed, — if then the
result should take the unexpected shape that his
pursuit has not been so ruinously costly after all —
nay, that his expenditure has actually fructified — it
is well. But if the book-hunter allow money-mak-
ing — even for those he is to leave behind^ — to be
combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish,

io6 His Functions.

its exhilarating influence, and becomes the ; source
of wretched cares and paltry anxieties. Where
money is the object, let a man speculate or become
a miser — a very enviable condition to him who has
the saving grace to achieve it, if we hold with Byron
that the accumulation of money is the only passion
that never cloys.

Let not the collector, therefore, ever, unless in
some urgent and necessary circumstances, part with
any of his treasure^. Let him not even have re-
course to that practice called barter, which political
philosophers tell us is the universal resource of
mankind preparatory to the invention of money as
a circulating medium and means of exchange. Let
him confine all his transactions in the market to
purchasing only. No good ever comes of gentle-
men amateurs buying and selling. They will either
be systematic losers, or they will acquire shabby,
questionable habits, from which the professional
dealers — on whom, perhaps, they look down — are
exempt There are two trades renowned for the
quackery and the imposition with which they are
habitually stained — the trade in horses and the
trade in old pictures ; and these have, I verily
believe, earned their evil reputation chiefly from
this, that they are trades in which gentlemen of
independent fortune and cons^iderable position are
in the habit of embarking.

The result is not so unaccountable- as it might

The Hobby. 107

seem. The professional dealer, however smart he
may be, takes a sounder estimate of any individual
transaction than the amateur. It is his object, not
so much to do any single stroke of trade very suc-
cessfully, as to d^al acceptably with the public, and
make his money in the long-run. . Hence he does
not place an undue estimate on the special article
he is to dispose of, but will let it go at a loss, if that
is likely to prove the most beneficial course for his
trade at large. He has no special attachment to any
of the articles in which he deals, and no blindly
exaggerated appreciation of their merits and value.
They come and go in an equable stream, and the
cargo of yesterday is sent abroad to the world with
the same methodical indifference with whi.ch that
of to-day is unshipped. It is otherwise with the
amateur. He feels towards the article he is to part
with all the prejudiced attachment, and all the con-
sequent over-estimate, of a possessor. Hence he and
the market take incompatible views as to value, and
he is apt to become unscrupulous in his efforts to
do justice to himself. Let the single-minded and
zealous collector then turn the natural propensity
to over-estimate one's own into its proper and legiti-
mate channel. Let him guard his treasures as
things too sacred for commerce, and say, Procul,
procul este, profani, to all who may attempt by
bribery and corruption to drag them from their
legitimate shelves. If, in any weak moment, he

io8 His Functions.

yield to mercenary temptation, he will be for ever
mourning after the departed unit of his treasure
— the lost sheep of his flock. If it seems to be in
the decrees of fate that all his gatherings are to be
dispersed abroad after he is gone to his rest, let
him, at all events, retain the reliance that on them,
as on other things beloved, he may have his last
look ; there will be many changes after that, and
this will be among them. Nor, in his final reflec-
tions on his conduct to himself and to those he is
to leave, will he be disturbed by the thought that
the hobby which was his enjoyment has been in any
wise the more costly to him that he has not made it
a means of mercenary money-getting.^

W^t JBtaultorg J^ealjer or JSoJfEtntan of 3Litetatuw.

AVING so put in a plea for this pursuit,
as about the least costly foible to which
those who can afford to indulge in
foibles can devote themselves, one
might descant on certain auxiliary advantages — as,

1 Atticus was under the scandal of havinig disposed of his books,
and Cicero sometimes hints to him that he might let more of them
go his way. In truth, Atticus carried this so far, however, that he
seems to have been a sort of dealer, and the earliest instance of a
capitalist publisher. He had slaves whom he occupied in copying,
and was in fact much in the position of a rich Virginian or Caro-
linian, who should find that the most profitable investment for his
stock of slaves is a printing and publishing establishment.

The Desultory Reader. 109

that it is not apt to bring its votaries into low
company ; that it offends no one, and is not likely
to foster actions of damages for nuisance, trespass,
or assault, and the like. But rather let us turn our
attention to the intellectual advantages accompany-
ing the pursuit, since the proper function of books
is in the general case associated with intellectual
culture and occupation. It would seem that, ac-
cording to a received prejudice or opinion, there is
one exception to this general connection, in the
case of the possessors of libraries, who are under
a vehement suspicion of not reading their books.
Well, perhaps it is true in the sense in which those
who utter the taunt understand the reading of a
book. That one should possess no books beyond
his power of perusal — that he should buy no faster
than as he can read straight through what he has^
already bought — is a supposition alike preposterous
and unreasonable. "Surely you have far more
books than you can read," is sometimes the inane
remark of the barbarian who gets his books, volume
by volume, from some circulating library or reading
club, and reads them all through, one a,fter the other,
with a dreary dutifulness, that he may be sure that
he has got the value of his money.

It is true that there are some books — as Homer,
Virgilj Horace, Milton, Shakespeare, and Scott —
which every man should read who has the oppor-
tunity — should read, mark, learn, and inwardly

I lo His Functions.

digest. To neglect the opportunity of becoming
familiar with them is deliberately to sacrifice the
position in the social scale which an ordinary educa-
tion enables its posseissor to reach. But is one
next to read through the sixty and odd folio volumes
of the Bollandist Lives of the Saints, and the new
edition of the Byzantine historians, and the State
Trials, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Moreri,
and the Statutes at large, and the Gentleman's
Magazine from the beginning, each separately, and
in succession ? Such a course of reading would cer-
tainly do a good deal towards weakening the mind,
if it did not create absolute insanity.

But in all these just named, even in the Statutes
at large, and in thousands upon thousands of other
books, there is precious honey to be gathered by
the literary busy bee, who passes on from flower
to flower. In fact, "a course of reading," as it is
sometimes called, is a course of regimen for dwarfing
the mind, like the drugs which dog-breeders give to
King Gharles spaniels to keep them small. Within
the span of life allotted to man there is but a certain
number of books that it is practicable to read
through, and it is not possible to make a selection
that will not, in a manner, wall in the mind from
a free expansion over the republic of letters. The
being chained, as it were, to one intellect in the
perusal straight on of any large book, is a sort of
mental slavery superinducing imbecility. Even

The Desultory Reader. i ii

Gibbon's Decline and Fall, luminous and compre-
hensive as its philosophy is, and rapid and brilliant
the narrative, will become deleterious mental food
if consumed straight through without variety. It
will be well to relieve it occasionally with a little
Boston's Fourfold State, or Hervey's Meditations,
or Sturm's Reflections for Every Day in the Year,
or Don Juan, or Ward's History of Stoke-upon-
Trent.

Isaac D'Israeli says, " Mr Maurice, in his animated
memoirs, has recently acquainted us with a fact
which may be deemed important in the life of a
literary man. He tells us, 'We have been just
informed that Sir William Jones invariably read
through every year the works of Cicero.' " What a
task ! one would be curious to know whether he
felt it less heavy in the twelve duodecimos of
Elzevir, or the nine quartos of the Geneva edition.
Did he take to it doggedly, as Dr Johnson says,
and read straight through according to the editor's
arrangement, or did he pick out the plums and take
the dismal work afterwards ? For the first year or
two of his task, he is not to be pitied perhaps about
the Offices, or the Dialogue on Friendship, or
Scipio's Dream, or even the capital speeches against
Verres and Catiline; but those tiresome Letters, and
the Tusculan Questions, and the De Natura ! It is
a pity he did not live till Angelo Mai found the De
Republica. What disappointed every one else

112 His Functions.

might perhaps have commanded the admiration
of the great Orientalist.

But here follows, on the same authority, a more
wonderful performance still. " The famous Bourda-
loue reperused every year St Paul, St Chrysostom,
and Cicero." ^ The sacred author makes but a
slight addition to the bulk, but the works of St
Chrysostom are entombed in eleven folios. Bour-
daloue died at the age of seventy -two ; and if he
began his task at the age of twenty-two, he must
have done . it over fifty times. It requires nerves of
more than ordinary strength to contemplate such a
statement with equanimity. The tortures of the
classic Hades, and the disgusting inflictions courted
'by the anchorites of old, and the Brahmins of later
times, do not approach the horrors of such an act of
self-torture.

Of course any one ambitious of enlightening the
world on either the political or the literary history
of Rome at the commencement of the empire, must
be as thoroughly acquainted with every word of
Cicero as the writer of the Times leader on a critical
debate is with the newly-delivered speeches. The
more fortunate vagabond reader, too, lounging about
among the Letters, will open many little veins of
curious contemporary history and biography, which
he can follow up in Tacitus, Sallust, Caesar, and the

1 Curiosities of Literature, iii. 339.

The Desultory Reader, 113

contemporary poets. Both are utterly different from
the stated-task reader, who has come under a vow to
work so many hours or get through so many pages
in a given time. They are drawn by their occupa-
tion, whether work or play ; he drives himself to his.
All such work is infliction, varying from the highest
point of martyrdom down to tasteless drudgery ;
and it is as profitless as other supererogatory in-
flictions, since the task-reader comes to look at his
-words without following out what they suggest, or
even absorbing their grammatical sense, much as
the stupid ascetics of old went through their peni-
tential readings, or as their representatives of the
present day, chiefly of the female sex, read "screeds
of good books," which they have not " the presump-
tion" to understand. The literary Bohemian is
sometimes to be pitied when his facility of character
exposes him to have a modification of this inflic-
tion forced upon him. This will occur when he
happens to be living in a house frequented by
"a good reader," who solenlnly devotes certain
hours to the reading of passages from the English
or French classics for the benefit of the company,
and becomes the mortal • enemiy of every guest
who absents himself from the torturing perfor-
mance. 1 . —

As to collectors, it is quite true that they do not
in general read their books successively straight
through, and the; practice of desultory reading, as

H

114 ^^^ Functions.

it is sometimes termed, must be treated as part of
their case, and if a failing, one cognate with their
habit of collecting. They are notoriously addicted
to the practice of standing arrested on some round
of a ladder, where, having mounted up for some
certain book, they have by wayward chance fallen
upon another, in which, at the first opening, has
come up a passage which fascinates the finder as the
eye of the Ancient Mariner fascinated the wedding-
guest, and compels him to stand there poised on his
uneasy perch and read. Peradventure the matter
so perused suggests another passage in some other
volume which it will be satisfactory and interesting
to find, and so another and another search is made,
while the hours pass by unnoticed, and the day
seems all too short for the pursuit which is a luxury
and an enjoyment, at the same time that it fills the
mind with varied knowledge and wisdom.

The fact is that the book-hunter, if he be genuine,
and have his heart in his pursuit, is also a reader
and a scholar. Though, he may be more or less
peculiar, and even eccentric, in his style of reading,
there is a necessary intellectual thread of connection
running through the objects of his search which
predicates some acquaintance with the contents of
the accumulating volumes. Even although he pro-
fess a devotion to mere external features — the style
of binding, the cut or uncut leaves, the presence or
the absence of the gilding— yet the department, iw

The Collector and the Scholar. 115

literature holds more or less connection with this
outward sign. He who has a passion for old editions
of the classics in vellum bindings— St'ephenses or
Aldines — ^will not be put off with a copy of Robinson
Crusoe or the Ready Reckoner, bound to match
and range with the contents of his shelves. Those
who so vehemently afiffect some external peculiarity
are the eccentric exceptions ; yet even' they have
some consideration for the contents of a -book as
well as for its coat. - ' j

a^fje Collector anti tj&e Scljolat.

ITHER the possession', or, in sorhe other
shape, access to a far larger Collection
of books than can be read through in a
lifetime, is in fact' an absolute condition
of intellectual culture and expansioil. The library
is the great iritellectuar stratification in which the
literary investigator works — examining its -external
features, or perhaps driving a ^' shaft through its
various layers— passing over this stratum as not
immediate to his purpose, ex^niining "that other
with the minute attention of microscopic investi-
gation. The geologist, the botanist, and' the zoolo-^
gist, are not content to -receive one speCirhen after
another into their homes, to be thoroughly and
separately examined, eafch In- succession,' as 'novels

ii6 His Functions.,

readers go through the volumes of a circulating
library at twopence ,a-night — they have all the
world of nature before thern, and examine as their
scientific instincts : or their fancies suggest. . For all
inquir;ers, like pointers, have a sort of instinct,
sharpened^ by training and practice, the power and
acuteness of which astonish the unlearned. " Read-
ing with the fingers," as Basnage said of Bayle —
turning the pages rapidly over and alighting on the
exact spot where the thing wanted is to be found —
is far from a superficial faculty, as some deem it to
be, — it is the thoroughest test of active scholarship.
It was what- enabled Bayle to collect so many
flowers of literature, all so interesting, and yet all
found in corners 39 distant and obscure. -,,

In fact, there are subtle dexterities, accjuired by
sagacious experience in searching for valuable little
trinkets in great libraries, just as in other! pursuits.
A great deal of that appea.rance of dry drudgery
which excitesr, the ..pitying amazement of the by-
stander , is nimbly evaded. People acquire a sort of
instinct, picking the valuables out of the useless
vei;biage, or the ,passia,ges i:epeated, from former
authors. It, is soon, found Vfhftt a great deal of lit-
erature h^, been, the mere "pouring; out of one
bottle ipto another,'? as the Anatomist ,of melan-
choly, terms it. There are those terrible foHos of
the scholas.tip divines, tJie civilians,; and the canonists,
their nsajestic stream, of ■ central, print overflowing

The Collector and the Scholar. 117

into rivulets of marginal notes sedgy with citations.
Compared with these, all the intellectual efforts of
our recent degenerate days seem the work of pig-
mies; and for any of us even to profess to read
all that some of those indomitable ' giants wrote,
would seem an audacious undertaking. But, in fact,
they were to a great extent solenin shams, since the
bulk of their work was merely that of the clerk
who copies page after page from other people's
writings. :

Surely these laborious old writers exhibited in
this matter the perfection of literary modesty. Far
from secretly pilfering, like the modern" plagiarist, it
was their great boast that they themselves had not
suggested the great thought or struck oiit the bril-
liant metaphor, but that it had been done -by some
one of old, and was folind in its legitimate place
— a book. I believe tha:t if oneJof these laborious
persons hatched a good idea of his own, he could
experience no peace of rfiirid until he found "it legiti-
mated by having passed through an earlier brain,
and that the' author who failed thus 'to establish a
paternity for his thought would sometimes auda-
ciously set dowri' some great name in his crowded
margin, in the hope that the imposition might pass
undiscovered.- Authorities, of course,' enjoy priority
according to their rank in literature! First come
Aristotle and Plato, with the other great classical
ancients; next the primitive fathers ;■ then^ Abailard,

ii8 His Fwictwm^\\ ■;

Erigena, Peter Lombard, Ramus, Major, and the like.
If the matter be jurisprudence, we shall have Mar-
cianus, Papinianus,, Ulpianus, Hermogenianus, and
Tryphonius. to begin with ; and shall then pass
through the' straits of Bartplus and Baldus,- on to
Zuichefnus, r Sanchez, Brissonius, Ritterhusius, and
Gothofridus, If all( these, say the same thing, each
of the others copyirig it from the first who uttered
it, so much, the more valuable to the literary world
is deemed the idea that has been so amply backed —
iti'is like a vote by a, great maj.ority, or a strongly-
signed petition. There is only; one quarter in which
this] practice appears to be,; followed at the present
day — the copaposition, or the compilation, as it may
better be termed, of English law-books. ■ Having
selected [a, department to be expounded, the first
point istoset down all that Coke said about it two
centuries and a half ago, and all that Blackstone
said about it a century ago, with passages in due
subordination from inferior , authorities. To these
are -added the rubrics of some later cases, and' a title-
pagp and index, aiid so a new " authority " is added
to the array on the shelyesof the practitioner.

Whoever is wrell up to such repetitions has many
short cuts through literature, to enable him to find
the scattered originalities of which he may be in
search. Whether he be the enthusiastic investi-
gator resolved on exiiausting any great question, or
be a mere wayward potterer, picking up curiosities

The Collector and the Scholar. 119

by the way for his own private intellectual museum,
the larger the collection at his disposal the better —
it cannot be too great.^ No one, therefore, can be
an ardent follower of such a pursuit without having
his own library. And yet it is probably among
those whose stock is the largest that we. shall find

1 I am quite aware that the authorities to tie. contrary are so high
as to make these sentiments partake of heresy, if not a sort of clas-
sical profanity.

" Studioruih' quoque, quae liberalissima impensa est, tamdiu ra-
tionem habet, quamdiu modum. Quo innumerabiles libros et bib-
lipthecas, quarum dominus vix tota vita indices perlegit? Onerat
discentem turba, non instruit : multoque satius est paucis te auctoribus
tradere, quam errare per multos. Quadraginta millia librorum Alex-
andrse arserunt : pulcherrimum regise opuleutise monumentum alius
laudaverit, sicut et Livius, qui elegantise regum cureeque egregium
id , opus ait fuisse.^ Non fuit elegantia- illud aut cura, sed studiosa
luxuria. Immo ne studiosa quidem : quoniam non in studium, sed
in spectaculum comjjaraverant : sictit plerisque, ignairis etiam ser-
vilium literarum libri non studiorum instrumenta, sed coenationum
omamenta sunt. Paretur itaque librorum quantum satis sit, nihil in
appaifatum. Hoiiestius, inquis, hoc te impensse,* quam ill Corinthia
pictasque tabulas effuderint. Vitiosum est ubique; quod nimium est.
Quid habes, cur ignoscas homini armaria, citro atque ebore captanti,
corpora conquirenti aut ignotorum auctorum aut improbatorum, et
inter tot millia librorum oscitantf,' cui voluminum suorum frontes
maxime placent titulique ? Apud" desidiosissimos ergo *idebis quic-
quid orationum historiarumque est, tecto tenus exstructa loculamenta ;
jam eriim inter balnearia et thermas bibliotheca quoque ut necessarium
domus ornamentum expolitur. Ignoscerem plane, si studiorum nimia
cupidine oriretur : nunc ista conquisita, cum imaginibus suis descripta
et sacrorum opera ingeniorum in speciem et cultum parietum compar-
antur." — Seneca, De Tranquillitate, c. ix.

There are some good hits here, which would tell at the present
day. Seneea is reported to have had a large library ; it is certain
that he possessed and fully enjoyed enormous wealth ; and it is amus-
ing to find this commendation of literary moderation following on a
well-known passive in praise of parsimonious living, and of the good

I20 His Functions.

the most frequent visitors to the British Museum
and the State Paper Office; perhaps, for what can-
not be found even there, to the/ Imperial , Library:
at Paris, or the collections of some of the German
universities.

To every man of our Saxon race endowed with
full health and strength, there is committed, as if it
were the price he pays for these blessings, the cus-
tody of a restless demon, for which he is doomed to
find ceaseless excitement, either in honest work, or
some less profitable or more mischievous occupation.
Countless have been the projects devised by the wit
of man to open up for this fiend fields of exertion
great enough for the absorption of its tireless ener-
gies, and none of them is more hopeful than the
great world of books, if the demon is docile enough
to be coaxed into it. Then will its erratic restless-
ness be sobered by the immensity of the^ sphere of
exertion, and the consciousness that, however vehe-
mently and however long it may struggle, the re-
sources set before it; will not be exhausted when the
life to which it is attached shall have faded away ;
and hence, instea,d of dreading the languor of inac-
tion, it will have to summon all its resources of

example set by Diogenes. Modem scepticism about the practical
stoicism of the ancients is surely brought to a climax by a living
writer, M. Fournier, who maintains that the so-called tub of Diogenes
was in reality a commodious little dwelling — neat but not gorgeous.
It must be supposed, then, that he spoke of his tub much as an
English country gentleman does of his "box."

The Collector and the Scholar. 121

promptness and activity to get over any consider-
able portion of the ground within the short space
allotted to the life of man.

That the night cometh when no man can work,
haunts those who have gone so far in their in-
vestigations, and draws their entire energies into
their pursuit with an exclusiveness which astonishes
the rest of the world. But the energies might be
more unfitly directed. Looki back, for instance^
no great distance back — on the great high-priest of
our national school of logic and metaphysics, — he
who gathered up its divers rays, and, helping them
with light from all other sources of human know-
ledge, concentrated the whole into one powerful
focus. No one could look at the massive brow, .the
large, full, lustrous eyes, the firm compressed lip,
without seeing that the demon of energy was power-
ful within him, and had it not found work in the
conquest of all human learning, must have sought it
elsewhere. You see in him the nature that must
follow up all inquiries, not by languid solicitation
but hot pursuit.' His coriquestsas he goes are rapid
but complete. Summing up the thousands upon
thousands of volumes, upon all matters of human
study andi in many languages,- which he has passed
through his hands, ypii think he has merely dipped
into them or skimmed them, or in some other shape
put them t6 superficial use. You are wropg: he
has found his way at once to the very heart of the

122 His Functions.

living matter of each one ; between it and him there
are henceforth no secrets.^

Descending, however, from so high a sphere, we
shall find that the collector and the scholar are so
closely connected with each other that it is diiificult
to draw the line of separation between them. As
dynamic philosophers say, they act and react on
each other. The possession of certain books has
made men acquainted with certain pieces of know-
ledge which they would not otherwise have acquired.
It is, in fact, one of the amiable weaknesses of the

^ How a nature endowed with powerful impulses like these might
be led along with them into a totally diflFerent groove, I am reminded
by a traditionary anecdote of student life. A couple of college chums
are under the impression that their motions are watched by an in-
quisitive tutor, who for the occasion may be called Dr Fusby. They
become both exceeding wroth, and the more daring of the two en^
gages on the first opportunity to "settle the fellow." They are
occupied' in ardent colloquy, whether on the predicates or other
matters it imports not, when a sudden pause in the conversation
enables them to be aware that there is a human being breathing close,
on the other side of the " oak." The light is extinguished, the door
opetied, and a terrific blow from a strong and scientifically levelled
fist hurls the listener down-stairs to the next landing- placer, from
which resting-place he hears thundered after him for his information,,
" If you 4ome back again, you scoundrel, I'll put you into the hands
of Dr Fusby." From that source, however, no one had much to
dread for some considerable period, during which the Doctor was
confined to his bedroom by serious indisposition. It refreshed the
recollection of this anecdote, years after I had heard it, and many
years after, the date attributed to it, to have seen a dignified scholar
make what appeared to me an infinitesimally narrow escape from
sharing the fate of Dr Fusby, having indfeed just escaped it by
satisfactorily proving to a hasty philosopher that he was not the,
party guilty of keeping a certain copy of Occam on the sentences of
Peter Lombard out of his reach.

The Collector and the Scholar. 123

set, to take a luxurious glance at a new acquisition.
It is an outcropping of what remains in the man, of
the affection towards a new toy that flourished in
the heart of the boy. Whether the right reverend
or right honourable Thomas has ever taken his new-
bought Baskerville to bed with him, as the Tommy
that was has taken his humming-top,; is a sort of
case which has not actually come under observation
in the course of my own clinical inquiries into the
malady; but I am ipot prepared to state that it
never occurred, and can attest many instances where
the recent purchase, has kept the owner from bed
far on in the night. In this incidental manner is
a general notion sometjnies fornied of the true ob-
ject and tenor of a book, which is retained in the
mind, stored for use, and capable of being refreshed
and strengthened whenever it is wanted. In the
skirmish for the Caxtons, which began the serious
work in the great conflict, of the Roxburghe sale,
it was satisfactory to find, as I have already stated,
on the authority of the great historian of the war,
that Earl Spencer, the victor, "put each volume
under his coat, and walked home with them in all
the flush of victory and consciousness of triumph." ^

1 The author, from a vitiated reminiscence, at first made the unpar-
donable blunder of attributing this' touching trait of nature to the noble
purchaser of the Valderfaer Boccaccio, For this, as not only a mistake,
but in some measure an imputation on the tailor who could have
made for his lordship pockets of dimensions so abnormal, I received due
castigation froni an eminent practical man in the book-hunting field.

124 His Functions.

Ere next morning he would know a good deal more
about the contents of the volumes than he did
before.

Wit ©leaner anli l&ia l^arfaeat.

HERE are sometimes agreeable and
sometimes disappointing surprises in
encountering the intferiors of books.'
The title-page is not always a distinct
intimation of what is to follow. Whoever dips into
the Novelise of Leo, or the Extravagantes, as edited
by Gothofridus, will hot find either of them to con-
tain matter of a light, airy, and amusing kind. Dire
have been the disappointments incurred by The.
Diversions of Purley— one of the toughest books in
existence. It has even cast a shade over one of our
best story-books, The Diversions of Hollycot, by the
late Mrs Johnston. The great scholar, Leo AUatius,
who broke his heart when he lost the special pen
with which he wrote during forty years, published
a work called Apiss Urbanse — Urban Bees. It is a
biographical work, devoted to the great men who
flourished during the Pontificate of Urban VIII.,
whose family carried bees on their coat- armorial.
The History of New, York, by Diedrich Knicker-
bocker, has sorely perplexed certain strong-minded
women, who read nothing but genuine history. The
book which, in the English translation, goes by the

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 125

name of Marmontel's Moral Tales, has been found
to give disappointment to parents in search of the
absolutely correct and improving ; and Edgeworth's
Essay on Irish Bulls has been counted money abso-
lutely thrown away by eminent breeders. There is
a sober-looking volume,, generally bound in sheep,
called MacEwen on the Types — a theological book,
in fact, treating of the, types of Christianity in the
old law. Concerning it, a friend once told me that,
at an auction, he had seen it vehemently competed
for by an acute-looking citizen artisan and a burly
farmer from the hills. The liatter, the successful
party, tossed the lot to the other, who might have

it and be d d to it, he "thought it was a buik

upo' the tups," a word which, it may be' necessary
to inform the unlearned reader, means rams : but
the other competitor, also; declined the lot; he was
a compositor or journeyman printer, and expected to
find the book honestly devoted to those tools of his
trade of which . it , professed to treat. Mr Ruskin,
having formed the pleasant little joriginal design of
abolishing the difference between Popery and Pro-
testantism, through the persuasive influence of his
own special eloquence, set forth his. views upon the
matter in a book which he termed a ' treatise " on
the construction of sheepfolds." I have been in-
formed that this work had a considerable run among
the muirland farmers, whose reception of it was not
flattering. I think I could also point to a public

126 His Functions.

library in England, the keeper of which justified his
high character for classification and arrangement by
binding up this production between "suggestions
as to eating off turnips with stock " and " an in-
quiry concerning the best materials for smeering;"
Peignot discusses, by the, way, with his usual scien-
tific precision,: as a department in Bibliography,
" Titres de livres qui ont induit en erreiir des Biblio-
thecaires et des Libraires peu instruits." After men-
tioning a treatise De Missis Dominicis, which was
not a religious book; as it might seem, but an in-
quiry into the functions of certain officers sent into
the provinces by the emperors and the early kings of
France, he comes neater to our ;own door in telling
how "un ignorant avait place le TraiU des Fluxions
de Maclaurin avec les livres de pathologie, prenant
pour une maladie les fluxions mathdmatiques." ^

Logic has not succeeded as yet in discovering
the means of framing a title-page which shall be
exhaustive, as it is termed, and constitute an in-
fallible finger-post to the nature of a book. From
the beginning of all literature it may be said that
man has been contintially struggling after this
achievement, and struggling in vain,- and it is a
humiliating fact, that the greatest adepts, abandon-
ing the effort in despaiir, have taken refuge in some
fortuitous word, which has served their purpose

^ Diet, de Bibliologie, i. 391.

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 127

better than the best results of their logical analysis.
The book which has been the supreme ruler of the
intellect in this kind of work, stands forth as an
illustrious example of failure. To those writings of
Aristotle which dealt with mind, his editing pupils
could give no name,— therefore they called them the
things after the physics — the metaphysics ; and that
fortuitous title the great arena of thought to which
they refer still bears, despite of efforts to supply
an apter designation in such words as Psychology,
Pneumatology, and Transcendentalism.

Writhing under this nightmare kind of difficulty,
men in later times tried to achieve completeness by
lengthening the title-page; but they found that
the longer they made it, the more it wriggled itself
into devious tracks, and the farther did it depart
from a comprehensive name. Some title-pages in
old folios make about half an hour's jeading.^ One

^ A good modern specimen of a lengthy title-pa^e may be found
in one of the books appropriate to the matter in hand, by the diligent
French bibliographer Peignot : —

" DiCTlONNAiRE RaisonniS de BtBLiOLOGlE : contenant — imo,
L'explication des principaux termes relatifs k la bibliographie, a Tart
typographique, a la diplomatique, aux langues, aux archives, aux
manuscrits, aux m^dailles, aux antiquites, &c. ; 2do, Des notices
historiques detaillees sur les principales biblioth^ues anciennes et
modernes ; sur les differentes sectes philosophiques ; sur les plus
celfebres imprimeurs, avec une indication des rtieilleures Editions
sorties de leurs presses, et sur les bibliographes, avec la liste de
leurs ouvrages ; 3tio, enfin, L'expositibn des diff&entes systfemes
bibliographiques, &c., — ouvr^e utile aux bibliothecaires, archivistes,
imprimeurs, libraires, &c. Par G. Peignot, Biblioth^caire de la

128 His Functions.

advantage, however, was found in these lengthy
titles — they afforded to controversialists a means of
condensing the pith of their malignity towards each
other, and throwing it, as it were, right in the face
of the adversary. It will thus often happen that
the controversialist states his case first in the title-
page ; he then gives it at greater length in the
introduction ; again, perhaps, in a preface ; a third
time in an analytical form, through means of a table
of contents ; after all this skirmishing, he brings up
his heavy columns in the body of-the book ; and if
he be very skilful, he may let fly a few Parthian
arrows from the index.

Haute-S^6ne, membre-correspondant de la Soci^te libre d'emulation
du Haut-Rhin. IndocH discant, ei ament meminisse periii, Paris,
An X. 1802."

Here follows a rival specimen selected from the same department
of literature : —

" BiBLIOGRAPHIE INSTRUCTIVE; OU, TrAIT£ DE LA CONNAIS-

SANCE DES LiVRES Rares et Singuliers ; contenant un catalogue
raisonn^ de la plus grande partie de ces livres precieux, qui ont paru
successivement dans la r^publique des lettres, depuis I'invention de
I'imprimerie jusqu'a nos jours ; avec des notes sur la diflF&ence et la
rarete de leurs Editions, et des remarques sur I'origine de cette rarete
actuelle, et son degre plus ou moins considerable ; la maniere de
distinguer les Editions originales, d'avec les contrefaites ; avec une
description typographique particulifere, du compost de ces rares
volumes, au moyen de laquelle il sera ais4 de reconnoitre facilement
les exemplaires, ou mutiles en partie, ou absolument imparfaitSj qui
s'en rencontrent journellement dans le commerce, et de Ies:distinguer
siiremelit de ceux qui seront exactement complets dans toutes leurs
parties. Dispose par ordre de matieres et de facultes, suivant le sys-
time bibliographique gfe&alement adopts ; avec une table gfo^rale
des auteurs, et uil syst^me complet de bibliographie choisie. Par
Guillaume-Franfois de.Bftre le jeune, Libraire de Paris."

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 129

It is a remarkable thing that a man should have
been imprisoned, and had his ears cut off, and be-
come one of the chief causes of our great civil wars,
all along of an unfortunate word or two in the last
page of a book containing more than a thousand.
It was as far down in his very index as W that the
great offence in Prynne's Histrio-Mastix was found,
under the head " Women actors." The words which
follow are rather unquotable in this nineteenth cen-
tury ; but it was a very odd compliment to Queen
Henrietta Maria to presume that these words must
refer to her — ^something like Hugo's sarcasm that,
when the Parisian police overhear any one use the
terms " ruffian " and " scoundrel," they say, " You
must be speaking of the Emperor." The Histrio-
Mastix was, in fact, so big and so complex a thicket
of confusion, that it had been licensed without ex-
amination by the licenser, who perhaps trusted that
the world would have as little inclination to peruse
it as he had. The calamitous discovery of the sting
in the tail must surely have been made by a Hebrew
or an Oriental student, who mechanically looked for
the commencement of the Histrio-Mastix where he
would have looked for that of a Hebrew Bible.
Successive licensers had given the work a sort of
go-by, but, reversing the order of the sibylline books,
it became always larger and larger, until it found a
licenser who, with the notion that he "must put
a stop to this," passed it without examination. It

I

130 His Functions..

got a good deal of reading immediately afterwards,
especially from Attorney-General Noy, who asked
the Star-Chamber what it had to do with the im-
morality of stage -plays to exclaim that church-
music is not the noise of men, but rather "a bleating
of brute beasts — choristers bellow the tenor as it
were oxen, bark a counterpoint as a kennel of dogs,
roar out a treble like a set of bulls, grunt out a bass
as it were a number of hogs." But Mr Attorney
took surely a more nice distinction when he made
a charge against the author in these terms : " All
stage-players he terms them rogues : in this he doth
falsify the very Act of ParHament; for unless they
go abroad, they are not rogues."

In the very difficulties in the way of framing a
conclusive and exhaustive title, there is a principle
of compensation. It clears literature of walls and
hedgerows, and makes it a sort of free forest. To
the desultory reader, not following up any special
inquiry, there are delights in store in a devious rum-
mage through miscellaneous volumes, as there are
to the lovers of adventure and the picturesque in
any district of country not desecrated by the tourist's
guide-books. Many readers will remember the plea-
sant little narrative appended to Croker's edition of
Boswell, of Johnson's talk at Cambridge with that
extensive book-hunter, Dr Richard Farmer, who
boasted of the possession of "plenty of all such read-
ing as was never read," and scandalised his visitor by

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 131

quoting from Markham's Book of Armorie a passage
applying the technicalities of heraldry and genealogy
to the most sacred mystery of Christianity. One
who has not tried it may ,fprm an estimate of this
kind of pursuit from Charles Lamb's Specimens of
the Writings of FuUen No doubt, as thus trans-
planted, these have not the same fresh relish which
they have for the wanderer who finds them in their
own native wilderness, yet, like the specimens in a
conservatory or a museum, they are examples of what
may be found in the place they have come from.

But there are passages worth finding in books less
promising, Those who potter in libraries, especially
if they have courage to meddle with big volumes,
sometimes find curious things — for all gems are not
collected in caskets. In searching through the solid
pages of Hatsell's Precedents in Parliament for
something one doesn't find, it is some consolation to
alight on such a precedent as the following, set forth
as likely to throw light on the mysterious process
called " naming a member." " A story used to be
told of Mr Onslow, which those who ridiculed his
strict observance of forms were fond of repeating,
that as he often, upon a member's not attending to
him, but persisting in any disorder, threatened to
name him — 'Sir, sir, I must name you '-r— on being
asked what would be the consequence of putting
that threat in execution and naming a member, he
answered, ' The Lord in heaven knows.' "

132 His Functions.

In the perusal of a very solid book on the progress
of the ecclesiastical differences of Ireland, written
by a native of that country, after a good deal of
tedious and vexatious matter, the reader's compla-
cency is restored by an artless statement how an
eminent person "abandoned the errors of the Church
of Rome, and adopted those of the Church of Eng-
land."

So also a note I have preserved of a brief passage
descriptive of the happy conclusion of a duel runs
thus : —

"The one party received a slight wound in the
breast ; the other fired in the air — and so the matter
terminated." ^

Professional law-books and reports are not gene-
rally esteemed as light reading, yet something may
be made even of them at a pincL Menage wrote a

1 This passage has been quoted and read by many people quite
unconscious of the arrant bull it contains. Indeed, an eminent
London newspaper, to which the word Bull cannot be unfamihar,
tells me, in reviewing my first edition, that it is no bull at all, but
a plain statement of fact, and boldly quotes it in confirmation of this
opinion. There could be no better testimony to its being endowed
with the subtle spirit of the genuine article. Irish bulls, as it has
been said of constitutions, "are not made — they grow," and that only
in their own native soil. Those manufactured for the stage and the
anecdote-books betray their artificial origin in their breadth and ob-
viousness. The real bull carries one with it at first by an imper-
ceptible confusion and misplacement of ideas in the mind where it
has arisen, and it is not until you reason back that you see it. Horace
Walpole used to say that the best of all bulls, from its thorough and
grotesque confusion of identity, was that of the man who complained
of having been "changed at nurse;" and perhaps he is right. An

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 133

book upon the amenities of the civil law, which does
anything but fulfil its promise. There are many
much better to be got in the most unlikely corners ;
as, where a great authority on copyright begins a
narrative of a case in point by saying, " One Moore
had written a book which he called Irish Melodies ;"
and again, in an action of trespass on the case, "The
plaintiff stated in his declaration that he was the
true and only proprietor of the copyright of a book
of poems entitled The Seasons, by James Thomson."
I cannot lay hands at this moment on the index
which refers to Mr Justice Best — he was the man,
as far as memory serves, but never mind. A searcher
after something or other, running his eye down the
index through letter B, arrived at the reference
"Best — Mr Justice — his great mind." Desiring to be
better acquainted with the particulars of this asser-

Irishman, and he only, can handle this confusion of ideas so as to
make it a more powerful instrument of repartee than the logic of
another man : take, for instance, the beggar who, when imploring a
dignified clergyman for charity, was charged not to take the sacred
name in vain, and answered, "Is it in vain, then? and whose fault
is that ? " I have doubts whether the saying attributed to Sir Boyle
Roche about being in two places at once ' ' like a bird, " is the genuine
article. I happened to discover that it is of earlier date than Sir
Boyle's day, having found, when rummaging in an old house among
some Jacobite manuscripts, one from Robertson of Strowan, the
warrior poet, in which he says about two contradictory military in-
structions, "It seems a difficult point for me to put both orders in
execution, unless, as the man said, I can be in two places at once,
like a bird." A few copies' of these letters were printed for the use
of the Abbotsford Club. This letter of Strowan's occurs in p. 92.

134 His Functions.

tion, he turned up the page referred to, and there
found, to his entire satisfaction, "Mr Justice Best
said he had a great mind to commit the witness for
prevarication."

The following case is curiously suggestive of the
state of the country round London in the days when
much business was done on the road : — A bill in
the Exchequer was brought by Everett against a
certain Williams, setting forth that the complainant
was skilled in dealing in certain commodities, " such
as plate, rings, watches, &c.," and that the defendant
desired to enter into partnership with him. They
entered into partnership accordingly, and it was
agreed that they should provide the necessary plant
for the business of the firm--— such as horses, saddles,
bridles, &c. (pistols not mentioned) — and should
participate in the expenses of the road. The dec-
laration then proceeds, "And your orator and the
said Joseph Williams proceeded jointly with good
success in the said business on Hounslow Heath,
where they dealt with a gentleman for a gold watch;
and afterwards the said Joseph Williams told your
orator that Finchley, in the county of Middlesex,
was a good and convenient place to deal in, and that
commodities were very plenty at Finchley aforesaid,
and it wfould be almost all clear gain to them ; that
they went accordingly, and dealt with several gentle-
men for divers watches, rings, swords, canes, hats,
cloaks, horses, bridles, saddles, and other things;

^The Gleaner and his Harvest. 135

that about a month afterwards the said Joseph Wil-
liams informed your orator that there was a gentle-
man at Blackheath who had a good horse, saddle,
bridle, watch, sword, cane, and other things to dis-
pose of, which, he believed, might be had for little
or no money ; that they accordingly went, and met
with the said gentleman, and, after some small dis-
course, they dealt for the said horse, &c. That your
orator and the said Joseph Williams continued their
joint dealings together in several places — viz., at
Bagshot, in Surrey ; Salisbury, in Wiltshire ; Hamp-
stead, in Middlesex ; and elsewhere, to the amount
of ;£'2000 and upwards." ^

Here follows a brief extract from a law-paper, for
the full understanding of which it has to be kept in
view that the pleader, being an officer of the law
who hks been prevented from executing his warrant
by threats, requires, as a matter of form, to swear
that he was really afraid that the ' threats would
be carried into execution.

"Farther depones, that the said A. B. said that
if deponent did not immediately take himself off
he would pitch him (the deponent) down stairs —
which the deponent verily believes he would have
done.

" Farther depones, that, time and pl^ce aforesaid,

^ This case has been often referred to in law-books, but I have
never met with so full a statement of tjie contents of the declaration
as in the Retrospective Review (vol. v. p. 8l).

136 His Functions.

the said A. B. said to deponent, ' If you come an-
other step nearer I'll kick you to hell ' — which the
deponent verily believes he would have done." ^

I know not whether " lay gents," as the Eng-
lish bar used to term that portion of mankind
who had not been called to, itself, can feel any
pleasure in wandering over the case -books, and
picking up the funny technicalities scattered over
them ; but I can attest from experience that, to
a person trained in one set of technicalities, the
pottering about among those of a different parish
is exceedingly exhilarating. When one has been
at work among interlocutors, suspensions, tacks,
wadsets, multiplepoindings, adjudications in im-
plement, assignations, infeftments, homologations,
charges of horning, quadriennium utiles, vicious in-
tromissions, decrees of putting to silence, conjoint
actions of declarator and reduction-improbation, —
the brain, being saturated with these and their
kindred, becomes refreshed by crossing the border
of legal nomenclature, and getting among common
recoveries, demurrers, Quarei impedits, tails -male,
tails-female, docked tails, latitats, avowrys, nihil

^ It is curious to observe how bitter a prejudice Themis has against
her own humbler ministers. Most of the bitterest legal jokes are
at the expense of the class who have to carry the law into effect.
Take, for instance, the case of the bailiff who had been compelled
to swallow a writ, and, rushing into Lord Norbury's court to pro-
claim the indignity done to justice in his person, was met by the
expression of a hope that the writ was " not returnable in this court."

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 137

dicits, cestui que trusts, estopels, essoigns, darrein
presentments, emparlances, mandamuses, qui tams,
capias ad faciendums or ad withernam, and so forth.
After vexatious interlocutors in which the Lord
Ordinary has refused interim interdict, but passed
the bill to try the question, reserving expenses ; or
has repelled the dilatory defences, and ordered the
case to the roll for debate on the peremptory de-
fences ; or has taken to avizandum, ; or has ordered
re-revised condescendence and answers on the con-
joiilt probation ; or has sisted diligence till caution
be found judicio sisti ; or has done nearly all these
things together in one breath, — it is like the con-
solation derived from meeting a companion in ad-
versity, to find that at Westminster Hall, "In fer-
medon the tenant having demanded a view after
a general imparlance, the demandant issued a writ
of petit cape — held irregular."

Also, "If, after nulla bona returned, a testatum
be entered upon the roll, quod devastavit, a writ of
inquiry shall be directed to the sheriff", and if by
inquisition the devastavit be found and returned,
there shall be a scire facias quare executio non de
propriis bonis, and if upon that the sheriff returns
scire feci, the executor or administrator may appear
and traverse the inquisition."

Again, "If the record of Nisi prius be a die
Sancti Trinitatis in tres Septimanas nisi a 27 June,
prius venerit, which is the day after the day in

138 His Functions.

Bank, which was mistaken for a die Sancti Mich-
aelis, it shall not be amended."

It is interesting to observe that at one end of the
island a panel means twelve perplexed agriculturists,
who, after haVing taken an oath to act according to
their consciences, are starved till they are of one
mind on some complicated question ; while, at the
other end, the same term applies to the criminal on
whose conduct they are going to give their verdict
It would be difficult to decide which is the more
happy application ; but it must be admitted that
we are a great way behind the South in our power
of selecting a nomenclature immeasurably distant
in meaning from the thing signified. We speak
of a bond instead of a mortgage, and we adjudge
where we ought to foreclose. We have no such
thing as chattels, either personal or real.^ If you
want to know the English law of book-debts, you

^ A late venerable practitioner in a humble department of the law,
who wanted to write a book, and was recommended to try his hand
at a translation of Latin law-ipaxims as a thing much wanted, was
considerably puzzled by the maxim, "Catella realis non potest
legari ; " nor was he quite relieved when he turned up his Ainsworth
and found that catella means a "little puppy." There was nothing
for it, however, but obedience, so that he had to give currency to
the remarkable principle of law, that "a genuine little whelp cannot
be left in legacy." He also translated "messis sequitur sementem,"
with a fine simplicity, into "the harvest foUoVfs the seed-time;"
and "actor sequitur forum rei," he made "the agent must be in
court when the case is going on." Copies, of the book containing
these gems are exceedingly rare, some malicious person having put
the author up to their absurdity.

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 139

will have to look for it under the head of Assump-
sit in a treatise on Nisi Prius, while a lawyer of
Scotland would unblushingly use the word itself,
and put it in his index. So, too, our bailments are
merely spoken of as bills, notes, or whatever a mer-
chant might call them. Our garneshee is merely a
common debtor. Baron and feme we call husband
and wife, and coverture we term marriage.

Still, for the honour of our country, it is possible
to find a few technicalities which would do no dis-
credit to our neighbours. Where one of them would
bring a habeas corpus — a name felicitously expres-
sive, according to the English method, of civil
liberty — an inhabitant of the North, in the same
unfortunate position, would take to running his
letters. We have no turbary, or any other ease-
ment ; but, to compensate us, we have thirlage, out-
sucken multures, insucken multures, and dry mul-
tures ; as also we have a soumin and roumin, as
any one who has been so fortunate as to hear Mr
Outram's pathetic lyric on that interesting right of
pasturage will remember, in conjunction with pleas-
ing associations. To do the duty of a. duces tecum
we have a diligence against havers. We have no
capias ad faciendum (abbreviated cap ad fac), nor
have we the fieri facias, familiarly termed fi fa, but
we have perhaps as good in the in meditatione
fugae warrant, familiarly abbreviated into fugie, as
poor Peter Peebles termed it, when he burst in

140 His Functions.

upon the party assembled at Justice Foxley's, ex-
claiming, " Is't here they sell the fugie warrants ? " ^

I am not sure but, in the very mighty heart of
all legal formality and technicality — the Statutes
at large — some amusing as well as instructive things
might be found. Let me offer a guiding hint to the
investigator ambitious of entering on this arduous
field. The princely collector will, of course, put
himself in possession of the magnificent edition of
the Statutes issued by the Record Commission, but
let not the unprofessional person who must look
short of this imagine that he will find satisfaction
in the prim pages of a professional lawyer's modern
edition. These, indeed, are not truly the Statutes
at large, but rather their pedantic and conven-
tional descendants, who have taken out letters of
administration to their wild ancestors. They omit
all the repealed Statutes in which these ancestors
might be found really at large sowing their wild

' There are two old methods of paying rent in Scotland — Kane
and Carriages ; the one being rent in kind from the farmyard, the
other being an obligation to furnish the landlord with a certain
amount of carriage, or rather cartage. In one of the vexed cases
of domicile, which had found its way into the House of Lords, a
Scotch lawyer argued that a landed gentleman had shown his de-
termination, to abandon his residence in Scotland by having given
up his "kane and carriages." It is said that the argument went
further than he expected — the English laviryers admitting that it was
indeed very strong evidence of an intended change of domicile when
the laird not only ceased to keep a carriage, but actually divested
hitaself of his walking-cane.

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 141

oats, and consequently all that would give them
interest and zest for those in search of such qualities.
It is not, for instance, in the decorous quartos of
Roughhead, but in the hoary blackletter folios, look-
ing older than they are — for blackletter adhered
to the Statutes after it had been cast off by other
literature — that one will find such specimens of
ancestral legislation as the following : —

Attorneys. — (33 Henry VI. c. 7.)

" Item : Whereas of time not long past, within
the city of Norwich, and the counties of Norfolk
and Suffolk, there were no more but six or eight
atturneys at the most coming to the King's Courts,
in which time great tranquillity reigned in the said
city and counties, little trouble or vexation was
made by untrue or foreign suits, and now so it is,
that in the said city and counties there be four score
atturneys or more, the more part of them having no
other thing to live upon, but only his gain by the
practise of atturneyship : and also the more part of
them not being of sufficient knowledge to be an
atturney, which come to every fair, market, and
other places, where is any assembly of people, ex-
horting, procuring, moving, and inciting the people
to attempt untrue and foreign suits for small tres-
passes, little offences, and small sums of debt, whose
actions be triable and determinable in Court Barons,

142 His Functions.

whereby proceed many suits, more of evil will and
malice than of truth of the things to the manifold
vexations and no little damage of the inhabitants
of the said city and counties, and all to the per-
petual diminution of all the Court Barons in the
said counties, unless convenient remedy be provided
in this behalf The foresaid Lord the King, con-
sidering the -premises, by the advice, assent, and
authority aforesaid, hath ordained and stablished
that at all times, from hencefort, there shall be but
six common atturneys in the said county of Norfolk,
and six common atturneys in the said county of
Suffolk, and two common atturneys in the said city
of Norwich, to be atturneys in the Courts of Re-
cord."

Fustian. — (ii Henry VII. c. 27.)

" Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtilty and
undue sleights and means, have deceivably imagined
and contrived instruments of iron, with the which
irons, in the most highest and secret places of their
houses, they strike and draw the said irons over the
said fustians unshorn ; by means whereof they pluck
off both the nap and cotton of the same fustians,
and break commonly both the ground and threeds
in sunder, and after by crafty sleeking, they make
the same fustians to appear to the common people
fine, whole, and sound : and also they raise up the

The Gleaner and kis Harvest. 143

cotton of such fustians, and then take a light candle
and set it in the fustian burning, which sindgeth and
burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from
the one end to the other down to the hard threeds,
in stead of shering, and after that put them in
colour, and so subtilly dress them that their false
work cannot be espied without it be by workmen
sherers of such fustians, or by the wearers of the
same, and so by such subtilties, whereas fustians
made in doublets or put to any other use, were
wont and might endure the space of two years and
more, will not endure now whole by the space of
four months scarcely, to the great hurt of the poor
commons and serving men of this realm, to the
great damage, loss, and deceit of the King's true
subjects, buyers and wearers of such fustians," &c.

The history of statute -making is not absolutely
divested of pleasantry. The best tradition connected
with it at present arising in the memory is not to
be brought to book, and must be given as a tradi-
tion of the time when George III. was king. Its
tenor is, that a bill which proposed, as the punish-
ment of an offence, to levy a certain pecuniary
penalty, one half thereof to go to his Majesty and
the other half to the informer, was altered in com-
mittee, in so far that, when it appeared in the form
of an act, the punishment was changed to whipping
and imprisonment, the destination being left un-
altered.

144 -^^-^ Functions.

It is wonderful that such mistakes are not of
frequent occurrence when one remembers the hot
hasty work often done by committees, and the com-
plex entanglements of sentences on which they have
to work.^ Bentham was at the trouble of counting
the words in one sentence of an Act of Parliament,
and found that, beginning with " Whereas " and
ending with the word ''repealed," it was precisely
the length of an ordinary three-volume novel. To
offer the reader that sentence on the present occa-
sion would be rather a heavy jest, and as little
reasonable as the revenge offered to a village school-
master who, having complained that the whole of
his little treatise on the Differential Calculus was
printed bodily in one of the earlier editions of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica (not so profitable as the
later), was told that he was welcome, in his turn,
to incorporate the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the
next edition of his little treatise.

In the supposition, however, that there are few
readers who, like Lord King, can boast of having
read the Statutes at large through, I venture to give
a title of an Act — a title only, remember, of one of
the bundle of acts passed in one session — as an in-

1 A polite correspondent reminds me of the Registration Act, 52
G. III. c. 156, in which the fruit of penalties is divided between the
informer, who gets one half, and certain charitable purposes, to which
the other is devoted, while the only penalty set forth in the Act is
transportation for fourteen years.

The Glmmr and his Harvest. 145

stance of the comprehensiveness of English statute
law, and the lively way in which it , skips from one
subject to another. ,,It is called —
, "An Act to continue several laws for the better
regulating of pilots, for th,e; conducting of ships and
vessels from Dover, Deal, and the Isle of Thanet,
up; the River Thaiiies; and Medway; and for the
permitting rum or spirits of the British sugar plan-
tations to.be ilanded before the duties of excise are
paid thereon,;, and to .continue and ^naend an Act
for preventing fraud in the admeasurement of coals
within the- city and iliberties of WeiStminster, and
several , parishes near thereunto; and to continue
several laws for preventing exactions of occupiers
of locks and wears upon the River Thames west-
ward ; and for ascertaining the rates .of water-car-
riage upon the said river ; and for the better regula-
tion and goyern-ment of sjeanien in the, merchant
service ; and also to amend so imuch of an Act
made during the reign, of King George I. as relates
to the better -preservation of salmon in the River
Ribble; and to regulate fees in trials. and assizes at
nisi prius," &c. ,;,;■,

But this gets ti;re§Qj?ie, aiid we: are only half way
through the title after all. If the reader wants the
rest of it, asi also. the substantial Act itself, whereof
it is the title, let him turn to the 23d of Geo. II.,

chap. 26. . ,j 'L. ,:.,;.-.. ; o -. '-:.■-■■ ■-'■

No wonder, if he anticipated this sort; of thing,
K

146 His Functions.

that Bacon should have commended ■" the excellent
brevity of the old Scots acts." Here, for instance,
is a specimen, an actual statute at large, -such as
they were in those pigmy days :-^

"Item, it is statute that gif onie of the King's
lieges passes in England, and resides and remains
there against the King's will, he shall be halden as
Traiter to the King."

Here is another^ very comprehensive, and worth
a little library of modern statute-books, if it was
duly enforced : —

" Item, it is statute and' ordained, that all our
Sovereign lord's lieges being under his obeisance,
and especially thfe Isles, be ruled by our Sovereign
lord's own laws, and the common laws of the realm,
and none other laws," '■'-''

The' Irish statute-book conveys more expressively
than any narrative the motl^ -contrasts of a history
in the fabric of which the grotesque and the tragic
are so closely interwoven. So early as. the middle
of the sixteenth century, English statesmen discover
usquebaugh, and pass an act to extinguish it at once:
" forasmuch as aqua vitm, a drink nothing profitable
to be daily drunken and used, is now universally
throughout this realm of Ireland made, and espe-
cially in the borders of the Irishry, and for the fur-
niture of Irishmen, and thereby niuch corn, grain;
and other things are consumed, spent, and wasted,"
and so fbrth."^- "'' :■' . •■'■''''.^y^. cri ''; ;; ''-•'■ '

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 147

To get men to shave and wash themselves, and
generally to conform to the standard of civilisation
in their day, seems innocent if not laudable ; yet
is there a world! of heartburning, strife, oppres-
sion, and retaliatory hatred expressed in the title of
" an act, that the Irishmen dwelling in the counties
of Dublin, Meath, Uriell, and Kildare, shall go
apparelled like Englishmen, and wear their beards
after the English manner, swear allegiance, and take
English surnames." Further on we have a wholei
series of acts, with a conjunction of epithets in their
titles, which, at the present day, sounds rather start-
ling, "for the better suppressing Tories, Robbers,
and Rapparees, knd for preventing robberies, burg-
laries, and other heinous crimes." The classes so
associated having an unreasonable dislike of being
killed, difficulties are thus put in the way of those
beneficially employed in killing them, insomuch
that they, "upon the killing of any one of their
number, are thereby so alarmed and put upon their'
keeping, that it hath been found impracticable foi*
such person or persons to discover and apprehend
or kill any more of them, whereby they are dis-
couraged from discovering and apprehending or
killing," and so forth. There is a strange and
melancholy historical interest in these grotesque
enactments," since they almost verbatim repeat the
legislation about the Highland clans passed a cen-
tury earlier by the Lowland Parliament of Scotland.

148 His Functions.

There is one shelf of the law library laden with
a store of which few will deny the attractive interest
— that devoted to the literature of Criminal Trials.
It will go hard indeed, if, besides the reports of
mere technicalities, there be not here some glimpses
of the sad romances which lie at their heart ; and,
at all events, when the page passes a very slight
degree beyond the strictly professional, the techni-
calities will be found mingled with abundant nar-
rative. The State Trials, for instance — surely a
lawyer's book — contaiiis the materials of a thousand
romances: nor are these all attached to political
offences ; as, fortunately, the book is better than its
name, and makes a virtuous effort to embrace all
the remarkable trials coming within the long period
covered by the collection. Some assistance may be
got, at the same time, froin minor luminaries, such
as the Newgate Calendar-^not to be commended,
certainly, for its literary merits, but full of matters
strange and horrible, which, like the gloomy forest
of the Castle of Indolence, "sent forth a sleepy
horror through the blood."

There are many other books, where records of re-
markable crimes are mixed up with much rubbish,
as. The Terrific Register, God's Revenge against
Murder, a little French book called Histoire Gen6-
rale des Larrons (1623), and if the inquirer's taste
turn towards maritime crimes, The History of the
Bucaniers, by Esquemeling. A little work in four

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 149

volumes, called the Criminal Recorder, by a student
in the Inner Temple, can be commended as a sort
of encyclopaedia of this kind of literature. It pro-
fesses—and is not far from accomplishing the pro-
fession — to ■ give biographical sketches of notorious
public characters, including " murderers, traitors,
pirates, mutineer^; incendiaries, defrauders, rioters,
sharpers, highwaymen, footpads, pickpockets, swind-
lers, housebreakers, coiners, receivers, extortioners,
and other noted persons who have suffered the
sentence of the law for criminal offences." By far
the most luxurious book of this kind, however, in
the English language, is Captain Johnston's Lives
of Highwaymen and Pirates. It is rare to find it
now complete. The old folio editions have been
often mutilated by over use ; the many later edi-
tions in octavo are mutilated by design of their
editors ; and for conveying any idea of the rough
truthful descriptiveness of a book compiled in the
palmy days of highway robbery, they are worthless.
All our literature of that nature must, however;
yield to the French Causes C^lebres, a term rendered
so significant by the value and interest of the book
it names, as to have been borrowed by writers in
this country to render their works attractive. It
must be noted as a reason for the success of this
work, and also of the German collection by Feuer-
bach, that the despotic Continental method of pro-
cedure by secret inquiry affords much better material

150 His Functions.

for narrative than ours by open trial. We make,
no doubt, a great drama of, a criminal trial. Every-
thing is brought on the; s.tage at once, and cleared
off before an audience excited so as no player ever
could excite ; but it loses in reading ; while the
Coiitinental inquiry, with its slow secret, develop-
ment : of the plot, makes the better novel for the
fireside.

There is a method by which, among ourselves,
the trial can be imbedded in a narrative which may
carry down to later generations a condensed reflec-
tion of that protracted expectation and excitement
which disturb society during the investigations and
trials occasioned by any great crime. This is by
"illustrating" the trial, through a process resemb-
ling that which has been already supposed to have
been applied to one of Watts's hymns. In this in-
stance -there will be all the newspaper scraps — all
the hawker's broadsides— -the portraits of the crimi-
nal, of the chief witnesses, the judges, the counsel,
and various other persons, — everything in literature
or art that bears on the great question.

He who inherits or has been able to procure a
collection of such illustrated trials, a century or so
old, is ;deemed fortunate among collectors, for he
can at any time, raise up for himself the spectre as
it were of the; great mystery and exposure that for
weeks was the : absorbing topic of attraction for
millions. The curtains are down — -the fire burns

The Gleamr..mkd his Harvest. 151

bright — the cat purrs on the rug ; Atticus, soused
in his easy-chair, cannot ^e; at the. trouble of going
to see Macbeth or Othello-4-he will sup full of
horrors from his own stores. .Accordingly he takes
down an unseemly yglume, characterised by a flabby
obesity by reason of the, unequjal size of the papers
contained in it, all being bound to the back, while
the largest only reach the margin. The first thing
at opening is the dingy pea- green r looking para-
graph from the provincial'; newspaper, describing
how the reapers, going to their work at dawn, saw
the clay beaten with: the marks; of struggle, and,
following the dictates of curiosity, saw a bloody
rag sticking on a tree, the leaves also streaked
with red, and, lastly, the instrunient of violence
hidden, in the moss ;;- next , comes from another
source the lamentations for a young woman who
had left her home — then the exc^ten;ient of putting
that and that together — the searchj and the dis-
covery of the body. The next paragraph turns
suspense into exulting wratihi : the perpetrator has
been found with his bloody shirt on — a scowling
murderous villain as ever was seen — an eminent
poacher, and fit for anything. But the next para-
graph turns the tables. The ruffian had his own
secrets of what he had been about that night, and
a,t last makes a clean breast. It w:ould have been
a bad business for him at any other time, but now
he is a revealing angel, for hc; noted this and that

152 His Functions.

in the course of his own little game, and gives
justice the thread which leads- to a wonderful
romance, and brings home desperate crime to that
quarter where, from rank, education, and profession,
it was least likely to be found. Then comes the
trial and the execution ; and so, at a sitting, has
been swallowed all that excitement which, at some
time long ago, chained up the public in protracted
suspense for weeks.

The reader will see, from what I have just been
saying, that I am not prepared to back Charles
Lamb's Index Expurgatoriiis.^ It is difficult,

1 " In .this, catalogue ,of books which are no books — biblia a biblia —
I reckon court calendars, directories, pdcket-books, draught-boards
bound and lettered on the back, scientific treatises, almanacs,' statutes
at large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Bea,ttie, Soame
Jenyns, and generally .all those, volunies which 'no gentleman's
library should be without ; ' thfe histories of Flavius Josephus (that
learned Jew) and Paley's Moral Pliilosophy. With these exceptions,
I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so catholic,
so unexcludihg. I confess that it moves rhy spleen to see these things
in books' clothing perched upon shelves, like false saints, usurpers of
true shrines, intruders into the sanctuary, thrusting out the legiti-
mate occupants. To re'acli down a well-bound semblaiice of a volume,
and hope it some-kind-hearted play-book, -then, opening what 'seem
its leaves, 'to come bolt upon a withering population essay. To ex-
pect a Steele, or a Farquhar, and find-pAdam Smith. To view a
well-arranged assortment of block-headed encyclopaedias (Anglicanas
or Metropolitanas) 'sef. ,oi}t in.an array of russia or morocco, when
a tithe of that good leather would comfortably reclojhe my shiver-
ing folios, would renovate Paracelsus himself, and enable old Ray-
mund Lully to look like himself again in the world. I never 6ee
these impostors but I long to strip theip, to warm my ragged veterans
in their spoils. " — Essays of Elia. ' ' ''

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 153

almost impossible, to find the book from which
something either valuable or amusing may not be
found, if the proper alembic be applied. I know
books that are curious, and really amusing, from
their excessive badnessi - If you want to find pre-
cisely how a thing ought not to be said, you take
one of them down, and make it perform the service
of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some
volumes in which, at a chance opening, you are
certain to find a mere platitude delivered in the
most superb and amazing climax of big words, and
others in which you have a like happy facility in
finding every proposition stated with its stern for-
ward, as sailors 6ay, or in some other grotesque
mismanagement . of composition. There are no
better farces on or off the stage than when two or
three congenial spirits ransack books of this kind,
and compete with each other in taking fun out of
them. '

There is a solid volume, written in an inquiring
spirit, but in a manner which reminds one of deep
C^ling Unto deep,' about the dark superstitions of a
country which was once a separate European king-
dom. I feel a pd'ciiliar interest in it, from the author
having informed me, by way of communicating an
important fact in literary histoty, dnd also as an
example to be followed by literary aspirants, that,
before committing the book to the press, he had
written it over sixteen times. 'It would have been

154 ,, His Functions,

valuable to have his first manuscript, were it only
that one might form some idea of the steps by which
he had brought it into the condition in which it was
printed. But its perusal in that condition was not
entirely thr.own away, since I was able to recommend
it to a teacher of composition, as containing, within
a moderate compass^^— after the manner, in fact, of a
handbook — good practical specimens of every de-
scription of depravity of style of virhich the English
language is susceptible. ,

In the present day, when fevy spholars have op-
portunities of enriching the world with their prison
hours, perhaps the best conditions for testing how
far any volume or, portion of printed matter, how-
ever hopeless -looking, may yet yield edifying or
amusing m^itter to a sufficient pressure, will occur
when a bookish- person finds himself imprisoned in a
country inn, say for twenty-four hours. Such things
are not impossible in this age of rapid movement.
It is not long since a train, freighted with musical
artistes, sent express to perform at a provincial con-
cert and be back immediately in town for other
engagements, was caught by a great snow-storm
which, obliterated the railway, and the travellers had
to live for a weeljc or two in a wayside alehouse,
in one of the dreariest districts of Scotland. The
possessor and user of a Icirge library undergoing such
a calamity in a niodified shape will- be able to form
a conception ;ofi the resources at his disposal, and to

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 155

calculate how long it will take him to exhaust the
intellectual treasures at his command, just as a
millionaire, hauated as such people sometimes are
by the dread of coming on the parish, might test
how long a life his invested capital would support
by spending a winter in a Shetland cottage, and
living on what he could procure. Having exhausted
all other sources of exicitement and interest, the
belated traveller is supposed to call for the literature
of the, establishment. Perhaps the Directory of the
county town is the only available volume. Who
shall say what the belated , traveller may make of
this ? He may do a turn in local statistics, or, if his
ambition rises higher, he may pursue some valuable
ethnological inquiries, trying whether Celtic or Saxon
names prevail, and testing the justice of Mr Thierry's
theory by counting the Norman patronymics, and
observing whether any of them are owned by per-
sons following plebeian and sordid occupations. If
in after-life the sojourner should come in contact
with people interested in the politics or business of
that county town, he will surprise them by exhibit-
ing his minute acquaintance with its affairs.
, If, besides the Directory, an Almanac, old or new,
is to be had, the analysis may bg^ conducted on a
greatly widened basis. The rotations of the changes
of the seasons may at the same time suggest many
appropriate reflections on the progress of man from
the cradle to the grave, and all: that he meets with

156 His Functions.

between the alpha and omega ; and if the prisoner
is a man of genius, the announcements of eclipses
and other solar phenomena will suggest trains of
thought which he can carry up to any height of
sublimity. A person in the circumstances supposed,
after he has exhausted the Directory and the Al-
manac, may perhaps be led to read (if he can get)
Zimmerman On Solitude, Hervey's Meditations,
Watts on the Improvement of the Mind, or Hannah
More's Sacred Dramas. Who knows what he may
be reduced to ? I remember the great Irish libera-
tor telling how, when once detained in an inn in
Switzerland, he could find no book to beguile the
time with but the Lettres Provinciales of Pascal.
I have no doubt that the coerced perusal of them
to which he had to submit did him a deal of good.

Let us imagine that nothing better is to be found
than the advertising sheet of an old newspaper —
never mind. Let the unfortunate man fall to and
read the advertisements courageously, and make the
best of them. An advertisement is itself a fact,
though it. may sometimes be the vehicle of a false-
hood ; and, as some one has remarked, he who has
a fact in hand is like a turner with a piece of wood
in his lathe, which he can manipulate to his liking,
tooling it in any way, as a plain cylinder or a richly
ornamented toy.' There have been fortunate in-
stances of people driven to read them finding good
jokes and other enjoyable things in advertisements

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 157

— such things as make one almost regret that so
little attention has been paid to this department
of literature.^ Besides the spontaneous undesigned
attractions to be found in it, there have been men
of distinguished parts whose powers have found
development in the advertisement line. George
Robins, a hero in his day, is surely not yet quite
forgotten ; and though he were, doubtless his works
will be restored to notice by future philosophers
who will perhaps find in them the true spirit of
the nineteenth century. Advertisements, more pro-
saic than his, however, bring us into the very heart
of life and business, and contain a world of interest;
Suppose that the ,dirty broadside you pick up in
the dingy inn's soiled room contains the annual
announcement of the reassembling of the school
in which you spent your own years of schoolboy
Hfe — what a mingled and many -figured romance
does it recall of all that has befallen to yourself
and others since th^ day when the same advertise-
ment made you sigh, because the hour was close at

"^ Take, for instance, the announcement of the wants of an affluent
and pious elderly lady, desirous of having the services of a domestic
like-minded with herself, who appeals to the public for a "groom to
take charge of two carriage-horses of a serious turn of mind." So
also the simple-hearted innkeeper, who founds on his "limited
charges and civility ; " or the description given by a, distracted family
of a runaway member, who consider that they are affording valuable
means for his identification by saying, "age not prfecisely known—
butlooks.plder thanheis." . ' , '

158 His Functions.

hand when you were to leave home and all its
homely ways to dwell among strangers ! Going
onward, you remember how each one after another
ceased to be a stranger, and twined himself about
your heart ; and then comes the reflection, Where

are they all now? You rettiember how

' ' I r ' ,1
'■' He, the young and strong,- who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell arid perished,
Weary with the march of life."

You recall to your memory also those two insepar-
ables — :linked together, it would seem, because they
were so unlike. The one, gentle,' dreamy, and
romantic, was to be the genius of the set ; but alas,
he " took to bad habits," and oozed into the slime
of life, imperceptibly almost, hurting rib creature
but himself — unless it may be that to some parent
or other near of kin his gentle facility may have
caused keener pangs than others give by cruelty and
tyranny. The other, bright -eyed, healthy, strong,
and keen - tempered ^the best fighter and runner
and leaper in the school — the dare-devil who was
the leader in every row— took to Greek much about
the time when his companion took to drinking, got
a presentation, wrote some wonderful things about
the functions of the chorus, and is now on the fair
road to a bishopric.

Next arises the vision of " the big boy," the lout
— the butt of every one, even of the masters, who.

The Gleaner and his Harvest. 159

when any little imp did a thing well, always made
the appropriate laudation tell to the detriment of
the big boy, as if he were bound to be as super-
fluous in intellect as in flesh. He has sufficiently
dinned into him to make him thoroiighly modest,
poor fellow, how all great men were little. Napo-
leon was little, so was Frederic the Great, William'
III., the illustrious Cond^ Pope, Horace, Anacreon,
Campbell, Tom -iVT^ore,' and Jeffrey. His relations
have so thoroughly given in to the prfejudice against
him, that they get him a cadetship because he is fit
for nothing at home ; and now, years afterwards,
the newspapers resound with his farrie^-^how, when
at the quietest of all stations when the mutiny sud-
denly broke out in its most murderous shape, and
even experienced veterans lost heart, he remained
firm and collected, quietly developing, one after an-
other, resources of which he was not himself aware„
and in the end putting things right, partly by stern
vigour, but more by a quiet tact and genial appre-
ciation of the native character. But what has be-
come of the Dux — hiin who, in the predictions of
all, teachers and taught^ was to render the institu-
tion some day illustrious by occupying the Wool-
sack, or the chief place at the. Speaker's right hand?
A curious destiny is his : at a certain point the
curve of his ascent was as it were truncated, and
he took to the commonest level of ordinary life
He may now be seen, staid and sedate in his walk,

i$o His Functions.

which brings him, with a regularity that has ren-
dered him useful, to neighbours owning erratic
watphes, day by day to a, lofty three-legged stool,
mounted on which, all his proceedings confirm the
high character retained by him through several
years for the neatness of his handwriting, and
especially for his precision in dotting his i's and
stroking his t's. ,

This is all along of the use which the reflective
man may make of an old advertisement. If it be
old, the older the better — the more likely is it to
contain matter of curious interest or instruction
about the ways of men. To show this, I reprint
two advertisements, from British newspapers.

From the .Public Advertiser of 28th March 1769.

f< 'T^O BE SOLD, A BLACK GIRL, the property of J. B ,

-'- eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her
needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well : is of an excel-
lent temper, and willing disposition.

"inquire of Mr Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St Clement's
Church in the Strand. "

From the Edinburgh Evening Courant, i8th

April 1768.

"A BLACK BOY TO SEf.L.

a 'yO BE SOLD, A BLACK BOY, with Ipng hair, stout made,
■^ and well-limbed — is^ good tempered, can dress hair, and
take care of a horse indifferently. He has' been in Britain nearly
three years.

" Any person that inclines to purchase him may have him for £i/:>.
He belongs to Captain Abercrombie at Broughton;

".This advertisements not to be repeated. " ., ; •■ s

Pretenders. i6i

There was at that time probably more of this
description of property in Britain than in Virginia.
It had become fashionable, as one may see in
Hogarth. Such advertisements^ — they were abun-
dant — might furnish an apt text on which a phil-
osophical historian could speculate on the probable
results to this country, had not Mansfield gone to
the root of the matter by denying all property in
slaves.

So much for the chances which still remain to
the deyourer of books, if, after having consumed
all the solid volumes within his reach, he should
be reduced to shreds and patches of literature, — like
a ship's crew having resort to shoe-leather and the
sweepings of the locker.

Pretenbera.

UT now to return to the point whence
we started — the disposition, and almost
the necessity, which the true enthusiast
in the pursuit feels to look into the
soul, as it were, of his book, after he has got pos-
session of the body. When he is not of the omniv-
orous kind, but one who desires to possess a par-
ticular book, and, having got it,: dips into the
contents before committing it to permanent ob-
scurity on his loaded shelves, there is, as we hafve

L

1 62 His Functions.

already seen, a certain thread of intelligent associa-
tion linking the items of his library to each other.
The collector knows what he wants, and why he
wants it, and that why does not entirely depend
on exteriors, though he may have his whim as to
that also.

He is a totally different being from the animal
who goes to all sales, and buys every book that is
cheap. That is a painfully low and grovelling type
of the malady ; and, forttinately for the honour of
literature, the bargain-hunter who suffers under it
is not in general a special votary of books, but
buys all bargains that corrie in his way— clocks,
tables, forks, spoorts, old uniforms, gas-meters, magic
lanterns, galvanic batteries, violin's (warranted real
Cremonas, from their being smashed to pieces),
classical busts (with the same testimony to their
genuineness), patent ,coffgg-pots, crucibles, amputat-
ing knives, wheel -barrows, retorts, cork-screws, boot-
jacks, smoke-jacks, melon-frames, bath-chairs, and
hurdy-gurdies.! It has been said that once, a coffin,
made too short for its tenant, being to be had an
undoubted bargaiin, was bought by hina, in the hopie
that, some diy cir other, it might prove of service in
his family. His Jibrary if such it may be termed,-
is very rich in old trade-directories, justices of peace
and registers ' of voters, road-books, and other use-
ful manuals; (Jjut.: there' are very learned' books in
it too. That clean folio' HerodotuS was certainly

Pretenders. i6

J

extremely cheap at half-a-crown ; and you need not
inform him that the ninth book is wanting, for he
will never find that out. The day when he has
discovered that any book has been bought by
another person^ a better bargain than his own
copy, is a black one in his calendar; but he has
a peculiar device for getting over the calamity by
bringing down the average cost of his own copy
through fresh investments. Having had the mis-?
fortune to buy a copy of . Goldsmith's History; of
England for five shillings, while a neighbour flaunts
daily in his face a copy obtained for three, he has
been busily occupied in a search for copies still
cheaper. He has now brought down the- average
price of his numerous copies of this more agreeable
than accurate work to three shillings and twopence,
and hopes in another year to get below the three"
shillings.

Neither is the: rich man who purchases fine and
dear books by deputy to be admitted , within the
category' of; the: genuine book-hunter. He must
hunt himself — must actually undergo the anxiety,
the fatigue, and, so far as purse is concerned, the
risks of the chase. Your rich man, known to the
trade as a great orderer of books,; is like the owrier
of the great ganie-preser^e, where the sport is heavy
butcheiy; there is none of the real zest of the!
hunter of -the wilderness to be had within his gates.
The old Duke of Roxburghe wisely sank his rank

164 His Functions.

and his wealth, and wandered industriously and
zealously from shop to stall over the world, just
as he wandered over the moor, stalking the deer.
One element in the excitement of the poorer book-
hunter he must have lacked — the feeling of com-
mitting something of extravagance — the conscious-
ness of parting with that which will be missed.
This is the sacrifice which assures the world, and
satisfies the man's own heart, that he is zealous
and earnest in the work he has set about. And
it is decidedly this class who most read and use
the books they possess. How genial a picture does
Scott give of himself at the time of the Roxburghe
sale — the creation of Abbotsford pulling him one
way, on the other his desire to accumulate a library
round him in his Tusculum. Writing to his familiar
Terry, he says, " The worst of all is, that while my
trees grow and my fountain fills, my purse, in an
inverse ratio, sinks to zero. This last circumstance
will, I fear, make me a very poor guest at the
literary entertainment your researches hold out for
me. I should, however, like much to have the
treatise on Dreams by the author of the New
Jerusalem, which, as John Cuthbertson, the smith,
said of the minister's sermon, ' must be neat
wark.' The loyal poems by N. T. are probably
by poor Nahum Tate, who was associated with
Brady in versifying the Psalms, and more hon-
ourably with Dryden in the second part of Absalom,

Pretenders. 165

and Achitophel. I never saw them, however,
but would give a guinea or thirty shillings for the
collection."

One of the reasons why Dibdin's expatiations
among rare and valuable volumes are, after all, so
devoid of interest, is, that he occupied himself in a
great measure in catering for men with measureless
purses. Hence there is throughout too exact an
estimate of everything by what it is worth in ster-
ling cash, with a contempt for small things, which
has an unpleasant odour of plush and shoulder-knot
about it Compared with dear old Monkbarns and
his prowlings among the stalls, the narratives of the
Boccaccio of the book-trade are like the account of
a journey that might be written from the rumble
of the travelling chariot, when compared with the
adventurous narrative of the pedestrian or of the
wanderer in the far East Everything is too com-
fortable, luxurious, and easy — russia, morocco, em-
bossing, marbling, gilding — all crowding on one
another, till one feels suffocated with riches. There
is a feeling, at the same time, of the utter useless
pomp of the whole thing. Volumes, in the condi-
tion in which he generally describes them, are no
more fitted for use and consultation than white kid
gloves and silk stockings are for hard work. Books
should be used decently and respectfully — rever-
ently, if you will ; but let there be no toleration
for the doctrine that there are volumes too splendid

1 66 His Functions.

for use, too fine almost to be looked at, as Brummel
said of some of his Dresden china. That there
should be little interest in the record of rich men
buying costly books which they know nothing about
and never become acquainted with, is an illustration
of a wholesome truth, pervading all human en-
deavours, afteir happiness. It is this, that the active,
racy enjoyments of life — those enjoyments in which
there is also exertion and achievement, and which
depend on these for their proper relish — are not
to be bought for hard cash. To have been to him
the true elements of enjoyment, the book-hunter's
treasures must not be his mere property, they must
be : his achievements— each one of them recalling
the excitement of the chase and the happiness of
success., Like Monkbarns with his Elzevirs and
his bundle of pedlar's ballads, he must have, in
common with all hunters, a touch of the competi-
tive in his nature, and be, able to take the measure
of a,' rival, ^ — ^^as Monkbarns magnanimously takes
that of Davie Wilson, "'commonly called Snuffy
Davie, from his inveterate addiction to. black rappee,
who was the very prince of scouts for searching
blind aj.leys, cellars, and stalls, for rare volumes.
He had the scent of a slow-hound, sir, and the snap
of a bulUdog. He would detect you an old black-
letter ballad among the leaves of a law-paper, and
find an editio princeps under the rnask of a school
Corderius,' "

Pretenders, 167

In pursuing the chase in this spirit, the sports-
man is by no means precluded: from indulgence
in the adventitious specialties that delight the com-
monest bibliomaniac. There is a good deal more
in many of them than the first thought discloses.
An editio pHnceps is not a mere toy — it has some-
thing in it that may purchase the attention even of
a thinking man. In the first place, it is a very old
commodity — about four hundred years of age. If
you look around you in the world you will see very
few movables coeval with it. No doubt there are
wonderfully ancient things shown to travellers, — as
in Glammis Castle you may see the identical four-
posted bedstead — a very creditable piece of cabinet-
makery — in which King Malcolm was murdered a
thousand years ago. But genuine articles of furni-
ture so old as the editio princeps 2txe!\ery rzxe. If
we should highly esteem a poker, a stool, a dfinking-
can, of that age, is there not something worthy of
observance, as indicating the social condition of the
age, in those venerable pages, made to look as like
the handwriting of their day as possible, with their
decorated capitals, all .squeezed between two solid
planks of oak, tovered with rithly embossed hog-
skin, which can be clasped together^ by means of
massive decorated clasps? And shall We riot admit
it to a higher: place in our reverence than some
mere item of household furnishing, when we reflect
that it is the very form in which some great ruling

1 68 His Functions.

intellect, resuscitated from long interment, burst
upon the dazzled eyes of Europe and displayed
the fulness of its face?

I^ia acf)te&«mentB in t^ie Creation o( Etkatteg.

O much, then, for the benefit which the
class to whom these pages are devoted
derive to themselves from their peculiar
pursuit Let us now turn to the far
more remarkable phenomena, in which these sep-
arate and perhaps selfish pursuers of their own in-
stincts and objects are found to concur in bringing
out a great influence upon the intellectual destinies
of mankind. It is said of Brindley, the great canal
engineer, that, — when a member of a committee,
where he was under examination, a little provoked
or amused by his entire devotion to canals, asked
him if he thought there was any use of rivers, — ^he
promptly answered, " Yes, to feed navigable canals."
So, if there bfe no other respectable function in life
fulfilled by the book-hunter, I would stand up for
the proposition that he is the feeder, provided by
nature, for the preservation of literature from age
to age, by the accumulation and preservation of
libraries, public or private. It will require perhaps
a little circumlocutory exposition to show this, but
here it is.

Creation of Libraries. 169

A great library cannot be constructed — it is the
growth of ages. You may buy books at any time
with money, but you cannot make a library like one
that has been a century or two a-growing, though
you had the whole national debt to do it with. I
remember once how an extensive publisher, speak-
ing of the rapid strides which literature had made
of late years, and referring to a certain old public
library, celebrated for its affluence in the fathers,
the civilians, and the medieval chroniclers, stated
how he had himself freighted for exportation, within
the past month, as many books as that whole library
consisted of This was likely enough to be true,
but the two collections were very diiferent from each
other. The cargoes of books were probably thou-
sands of copies of some few popular selling works.
They might be a powerful illustration of the diffu-
sion of knowledge, but what they were compared
with was its concentration. Had all the paper of
which these cargoes consisted been bank-notes, they
would not have enabled their owner to create a
duplicate of the old library, rich in the fathers, the
civilians, and the medieval chroniclers.

This impossibility of improvising libraries is really
an important and curious thing ; and since it is apt
to be overlooked, owing to the facility of buying
books, in quantities generally far beyond the avail-
able means of any ordinary buyer, it seems worthy
of some special consideration. A man who sets to

1 70 His Functions.

form a library will go on swimmingly for a short
way. He will easily get Tennyson's Poems — Mac-
aulay's and, Alison's Histories — the Encyclopaedia
Britannica — Buckle on Civilisation — all the books
"in print," as it is, termed. Nay, he will find no
difficulty in procuring copies of others which may
not happen to be on the shelves of the publisher or
of the retailer of new books. Of Voltaire's works —
a little library: in itself— he will get a copy at his
call in London, if he has not set his mind on some
special edition. So of SCott's edition of Swift or
Dryden, Croker's edition of Boswell's Johnson, and
the like. One can scarcely sM|)pose a juncture in
which any of these cannot be found through the
electric chain of communication established by the
book-trade. Of Gibbon's , and Hume's Histories —
Jeremy Taylor's works — iBbssuet's Universal History,
and the like^ copies abound everywhere. Go back
a little, and ask for Kennet'is Collection, of the His-
torians — Echard's History, Bayle, Moreri, or Pather
Daniers_ History of France, you cannot be. so certain
of inamediately obtaining, your object, but you will
get the book in the end — no, doubt about that

Everything has its: capricies, and there are some
books which might be expected to be equally shy,
but in reality, by some inexplicable fatality,- are as
plentiful as blackberries. Such, for instance, are
Famianus Strada's History of the Dutch War of
Independence^one of the most brilliant works ever

Creation of Libraries. 171

written, and in the very best Latin after Buchanan's.
There is Buchanan's own history, veiry common even
in the shape of the early Scotch edition of 1582,
which is a highly favourable specimen of Arbuth-
not's printing. Then there are Barclay's Argenis,
and Raynal's Philosophical History of the East and
West Indies, without which no book-stall is to be
considered complete, and which seem to be possessed
of a supernatural power of resistance to the elements,
since, month after month, in fair weather or foul,
they are to be seen at their p'osts dry or dripping.

So the collector goes on, till he perhaps collects
some five thousand 'volumes or so of select works.
If he is miscellaneous in his taste, he may get on
pretty comfortably to ten or fifteen thousand, and
then his troubles will arise. He has easily got
Baker's and Froissart's and Monstrelet's. Chronicles,
because there are modern reprints of them in the
market. But if he want Cooper's Chronicle, he may
have to wait for it, since its latest form is still the
black-letter. True, J did pick up a copy lately, at
Braidwood's, for half-a-guinea, but that was a catch
— it might have caused the search of a lifetime.
Still more hopeless it is when the collector's ambi-
tion extends to The Ladder of Perfection of Wynkin
de Worde, or to' his King Rycharde Cure de Lion,
whereof it is reported in the Repertorium Biblio-
graphicum, that "an imperfect copy, wanting one
leaf, was sold by auction at Mr Evans's, in June

172 His Functions.

1817, to Mr Watson Taylor for £4,0, 19s." "Woe
betide," says Dibdin, " the young bibliomaniac who
sets his heart upon Breton's Flourish upon Fancie
and Pleasant Toyes of an Idle Head, 1557, 4to; or
Workes of a Young Wyt trussed up with a Fardell
of Pretty Fancies ! ! Threescore guineas shall
hardly fetch these black-letter rarities from the
pigeon-holes of Mr Thorpe. I lack courage to add
the prices for which these copies sold." But he has
some comfort reserved for the hungry collector, in
the intimation that The Ravisht Soul and the
Blessed Weaper, by the same author, may be had
for ;^i5.^ It creates a thrilling interest to know,
through the same distinguished authority, that the
Heber sale must have again let loose upon the world
" A merry gest and a true, howe John Flynter made
his Testament," concerning which we are told, with
appropriate solemnity and pathos, that "Julian
Notary is the printer of this inestimably precious
volume, and Mr Heber is the thrice-blessed owner
of the copy described in the Typographical Anti-
quities."

Such works as the Knightly Tale of Galogras,
The Temple of Glas, Lodge's Nettle for Nice Noses,
or the Book of Fayts of Armes, by Christene of
Pisa, or Caxton's Pylgremage of the Sowle, or
his Myrrour of the Worlde, will be long inquired

^ Library Compaiiion, p. 699.

Creation of Libraries. 173

after before they come to the market, thoroughly-
contradicting that fundamental principle of politi-
cal economy, that the supply is always equal to the
demand.

He, indeed, who sets his mind on the possession
of any one of these rarities, may go to his grave a
disappointed man. It will be in general the con-
solation of the collector, however, that he is by no
means the "homo unius libri." There is always
something or other turning up for him, so long as
he keeps within moderate bounds. If he be rich
and ravenous, however, there is nothing for it but
duplicating — the most virulent form of book-mania.
We have seen that Heber, whose collection, made
during his own lifetime, was on the scale of those
public libraries which take generations to grow, had,
with all his wealth, his liberality, and his persevering
energy, to invest himself with duplicates, triplicates
— often many copies of the same book.

It is rare that the private collector runs himself
absolutely into this quagmire, and has so far ex-
hausted the market that no already unpossessed
volume turns up in any part of the world to court
his eager embraces. The limitation constitutes,
however, a serious difficulty in the way of rapidly
creating great public libraries. We would obtain
the best testimony to this difficulty in America,
were our brethren there in a condition to speak or
think of so peaceful a pursuit as library -making.

174 His Functions.

In the normal condition of society there — some-
thing like that of Holland in the seventeenth cen-
tury — ^there are powerful elements for the promo-
tion of art and letters, when wealth gives the means
and civilisatioh the desire to promote them. The
very absence of feudal institutions — the inability
to found a baronial house — turns the thoughts of
the rich and liberal to other foundations calcular
ted to transmit' their name and influence to pos-
terity. And so we have such bequests as John
Jacob Astor's, who left four hundred thousand
dollars for a library, and the hundred and eighty
thousand which were the nucleus of the Smith-
sonian Institution. Yes ! Their efforts in this
direction have fully earned for them their own
peculiar form of laudation as " actually, equal to
cash." Hence, as the book-trade, and book-buyers
know very well, the "almighty dollar" has been
hard at work, trying to rear up by its sheer force
duplicates of the old European libraries, containing
not only all the ordinary stock books in the market,
but also the rarities, and those individualities —
solitary remaining copies of impressions— ^which the
initiated call uniques. It is clear, however, that
when there is but one copy, it can only, be in one
place ; and if it have been rooted for centuries in
the Bodleian, or the University of Tubingen, it
is not to be had for Harvard or the Astorian. Dr
Cogswell, the 'first librarian of the Astoriain, spent

Creation of Libraries. 175

some time in Europe with' his princely endow-
ment in his pocket, and showed himself a judici-
ous, active, and formidable sportsman in the book-
hunting world. Whenever, from private collections,
or the breaking -up of public institutions, rarities
got abroad into the open market, the collectors of
the old country found that they had a resolute
competitor to deal with — almost, it might be said,
a desperate one — since he was in a manner the
representative of a nation using powerful efforts to
get possession of a share of the literary treasures of
the Old World.

In the case of a book, for instance, of which half-
a-dozen copies might be known to exist, the com-
batants before the auctioneer would be, on the one
side, many an ambitious collector desiring to belong
to the fortunate circle already in possession of such
a treasure ; but on the other side was one on whose
exertions depended the ;question, whether the book
should henceforth be part of the intellectual wealth
of a great empire, and should be accessible for con-
sultation by Anierican scholars and authors without
their requiring to cross the Atlantit. Let us see
how far, by a brief comparison, money has enabled
them to triumph over the difficulties of their posi-
tion. ; : ;

It is difficult to know exactly the , numerical con-
tents of a librairyi as some people count by volumes,
and others by the separate works, small of great ;

176 His Functions.

and even if all should consent to count by volume^
the estimate would not be precise, for in some lib-
raries bundles of tracts and other small works are
massed in plethoric volumes for economy, while in
affluent institutions every collection of leaves put
under the command of a separate title-page is
separately bound in cloth, calf, or morocco, ac-
cording to its rank. The Imperial Library at Paris
is computed to contain above eight hundred thou-
sand volumes ; the Astorian boasts of approaching
a hundred thousand : the next libraries in size in
America are the Harvard, with from eighty thou-
sand to ninety thousand ; the Library of Congress
which has from sixty thousand to seventy thousand ;
and the Boston Athenaeum, which has about sixty
thousand.

There are many of smaller size. In fact, there is
probably no country so well stocked as the States
with libraries of from ten thousand to twenty thou-
sand volumes, — ^the evidence that they have bought
what was to be bought, and have done all that a
new people can to participate in the long-hoarded
treasures of literature which it is the privilege of
the Old World to possess. I know that, especially
in the instance of the Astorian Library, the selec-
tions of books have been made with great judg-
ment, and that, after the boundaries of the common
crowded market were passed, and individual rarities
had to be stalked in distant hunting-grounds, innate

Creation of Libraries. 177

literary value was still held an objegt more impor-
tant than mere abstract rarity, and, as the more
worthy quality of the two, that on which the buy-
ing power available to the emissary was brought to
bear.

The zeal and wealth which the citizens of the
States have thrown into the limited field from
which a library can be rapidly reaped, are mani-
fested in the size and value of their private collec-
tions. A volume, called The Private Libraries of
New York, by James Wynne, M.D., affords interest-
ing evidence of this phenomenon. It is printed on
large thick paper, after the most luxurious fashion
of our book clubs, apparently for private distribu-
tion. The author states, however, that " the greater
part of the sketches of private libraries to be found
in this volume, were prepared for and published in
the Evening Post about two years since. Their
origin is due to a request on the part of Mr Bige-
low, one of the editors of the Post, to the writer, to
examine and sketch the more prominent private
collections of books in New York."

Such an undertaking reveals, to us of the old
country, a very singular social condition. With us,
the class who may be thus offered up to the mar-
tyrdom of publicity is limited. The owners of great
houses and great collections are doomed to share
them with the public, and if they would frequent
their own establishments, must be content to do so

M

178 His Functions.

in the capacity of librarians or showmen, for the
benefit of their numerous and uninvited visitors.
They generally, with wise resignation, bo)v to the
sacrifice, and, abandoning all connection with their
treasures, dedicate them to the people — nor, as their
affluence is generally sufficient to surround, them
with an abundance of other enjoyments, are they an
object of much pity. .

But that the privacy of our ordinary wealthy and
middle classes should be invaded in a similar shape,
is an idea that could not get abroad without creat-
ing sensations of the most lively horror. They
manage these things differently across the Atlantic,
and so here we have "over" fifty gentlemen's pri-
vate collections ransacked and anatomised. If they
like it, we have no reason to complain, but rather
have occasion to rejoice in the valuable and inter-
esting result.

It is quite natural that their ways of esteeming
a collection should not be as our ways. There is
a story of a Cockney auctioneer, who had a location
in the back settlements to dispose of, advertising
that it was "almost entirely covered with fine old
timber." To many there would appear to be an
equal degree of verdant simplicity in mentioning
among the specialties and distinguishing features
of a collection — the Biographia and Encyclopaedia
Britannica; Lowndes's Manual, the Quarterly and
Edinburgh Reviews, Boyle;, Ducange, Moreri, Dods-

Creation of Libraries. 179

ley's Annual Register, Watt's Bibliotheca, and Dio-
dorus Siculus.

The statement that there is in Dr Francis's col-
lection a " complete set of the Recueil des Causes
C^l^bres; collected by' Maurice Mejan, in eighteen
volumes — a scarce and valuable work " — would
throw any of our black-letter knight -errants into
convulsions of laughter. There are also some in-
stances of perhaps not unnatural confusion between
one merely local British celebrity and another, as
where it is set forth that in Mr Noyes's collection
"there is a fine copy of Sir Robert Walpole's
works, in five large quarto volumes, embellished
with plates." But under all this inexperience of
the ways of the craft as it is cultivated among us,
and unconsciousness of such small parochial dis-
tinctions as may hold between Sir Robert Walpole,
our Prime Minister, and Horace Walpole, the man
of letters and trinkets, the book contains a quantity
of valuable and substantial matter, both as a record
of rich stores of learning heaped up for the use of
the scholar, and marvellous varieties to dazzle the
eyes of the mere Dibdinite. , The prevailing feature
throughout is the lavish costliness and luxury of
these collections, several of which exceed ten thou-
sand volumes. Where collections have grown so
large that, on the principles already explained, their
increase is impeded, the owner's zeal and wealth
seem to have developed themselves in the lavish

i8o His Functions.

enshrining and decorating of such things as were
attainable.^

The descriptions of a remorseless investigator like
this have a fresh individuality not to be found here,
where our habitual reserve prevents us from offering

1 Take as a practical commentary on what has been said (p. 82)
on " illustrating " books, the following passage describing some of
the specialties of a collection, the general features of which are de-
scribed further on : —

" But the crowning glory is a folio copy of Shakespeare, illustrated
by the collector himself, with a prodigality of labour and expense,
that places it far above any similar work ever attempted. The
letterpress of this great work is a choice specimen of Nichol's types,
and each play occupies a separate portfolio. These are accompanied
by costly engravings of landscapes, rare portraits, maps, elegantly
coloured plates of costumes, and water-colour drawings, executed
by some of the best artists of thie day. Some of the plays have over
200 folio illustrations, each of which is beautifully inlaid or mounted,
and many of the engravings are very valuable. Some of the land-
scapes, selected from the oldest cosmographies known, illustrating
the various places mentioned in the pages of Shakespeare, are ex-
ceedingly curious as well as valuable.

"In the historical plays, when possible, every character is por-
trayed from authoritative sources, as old tapestries, monumental
brasses, or illuminated works of the age, in well-executed drawings
or recognised engravings. There are in this work a vast number
of illustrations, in addition to a very numerous collection of water-
colour drawings. In addition to the thirty-seven plays, are two
volumes devoted to Shakespeare's life and times, one volume of
portraits, one volume devoted to distinguished Shakespearians, one
to poems, and two to disputed plays, the whole embracing a series
of forty-two folio volumes, and forming, perhaps, the most remark-
able and costly monument, in this shape, ever attempted by a devout
worshipper of the Bard of Avon. The volume devoted to Shake-
speare's portraits was purchased by Mr Burton, at the sale of a
gentleman's library, who had spent many years in making the col-
lection, and iticludes various 'effigies ' unknown to many laborious
collectors. It contains upwards of 100 plates, for the most part

Creation of Libraries. i8i

or enjoying a full, true, and particular account of
the goods of our neighbours, unless they are brought
to the hammer, — and then they have lost half the
charm which they possessed as the household gods
of some one conspicuous by position or character.

proofs. The value of this collection may be estimated by the fact,
that a celebrated English collector recently offered its possessor ;^6o
for this single volume.

" In the reading-room directly beneath the main library, are a
number of portfolios of prints illustrative of the plays of Shakespeare,
of a size too large to be included in the illustrated collection just
noticed. There is likewise another copy of Shakespeare, based
upon Knight's pictorial royal octavo, copiously illustrated by the
owner ; but although the prints are numerous, they are neither as
costly nor as rare as those contained in the large folio copy.

' ' Among the curiosities of the Shakespeare collection are a num-
ber of copies of the disputed plays, printed during his lifetime, with
the name of Shakespeare as their author. It is remarkable, if these
plays were not at least revised by Shakespeare, that no record of a
contradiction of their authorship should be found. It is not im-
probable that many plays written by others were given to Shake-
speare to perform in his capacity as a theatrical manager, requiring
certain alterations in order to adapt them to the use of the stage,
which were arranged by his cunning and skilful hand, and these
plays afterward found their way into print, with just sufficient of his
emendations to allow his authorship of them, in the carelessness in
which he held his literary fame, to pass uncontradicted by him.

"There is a copy of an old play of the period, with manuscript
annotations, and the name of Shakespeare written on the title-page.
It is either the veritable signature of the poet, or an admirably
imitated forgery. Mr Burton inclined to the opinion that the work
once belonged to Shakespeare, and that the signature is genuine.
If so, it is probably the only scrap of his handwriting on this con-
tinent. This work is not included in the list given of Ireland's
library, the contents of which were brought into disrepute by the
remarkable literary forgeries of the son, but stands forth peculiar
and unique, and furnishes much room for curious speculation."—
(148-SI.)

1 82 His Functions.

and are little more estimable than other common
merchandise. ■ It would be difficult to find, among
the countless books about books produced by us in
the old country, any in ^irhich the bent of individual
tastes and propensities is so distinctly represented
in tangible symbols ; and the reality of the elucida-
tion is increased by the sort of innocent surprise
with which the historian approaches each " lot,"
evidently as a first acquaintance, about whom he
inquires and obtains all available particulars, good-
humouredly communicating them in bald detail to
his reader. Here follows a sketch — and surely a
tempting one — of a New York interior : —

" Mr Burton's library contains nearly sixteen
thousand volumes. Its proprietor had constructed
for its accommodation and preservation a three-
storey fire-proof building, about thirty feet square,
which is isolated from all other buildings, and. is
connected with his residence in Hudson Street by
a conservatory gallery. The chief library-room oc-
cupies the upper floor of this building, and is about
twenty-five feet in height. Its ceiling presents a
series of groined rafters, after the old English style,
in the centre of which rises a dome - skylight of
stained glass. The sides of the library are fitted up
with thirty-six oak book-cases of a Gothic pattern,
which entirely surround it, and are nine feet in
height . The space between the ceiling and the
book -cases is filled with paintings, for the most

Creation of 'Libraries. 183

part of large! size, a.hd said to be of value. Speci-
mens of armour and busts of distinguished authors
decorate appropriate compartments, and in a pro-
minent niche, at the head of the apartment, stands
a full-length statue of Shakespeare, executed by
Thom, in the same style as the Tarn o' Shanter and
Old Mortality groups of this Scotch sculptor.

" The great specialty of the library is its Shake-
speare collection ; but, although very extensive and
valuable, it by no means engrosses the entire library,
which contains a large number of valuable works in
several departments of literature.

" The number of lexicons and dictionaries is large,
and among the latter may be found all the rare old
English works so valuable for reference. Three
book-cases are devoted to serials, which, contain
many of the standard reviews and magazines. One
case is appropriated to voyages and travels, in which
are found many valuable ones. In another are
upwards of one hundred volumes of table-talk, and
numerous works on the fine arts and bibliography.
One book-case is devoted to choice works on Ame-
rica, among which is Sebastian Munster's Cosmo-
graphia Totius Orbis Regionum, published in folio
at Basle in 1537, which contains full notes of Co-
lumbus, Vespucci, and other early voyagers. An-
other department contains a curious catalogue of
authorities relating to Grime and Punishment ; a
liberal space is devoted to Facetiae, another to Ajne-

184 His Functions.

rican^ Poetry, and also one to Natural and Moral
Philosophy. The standard works of Fiction, Bio-
graphy, Theology, and the Drama, are all repre-
sented.

"There is a fair collection of classical authors,
many of which are of Aldine and Elzevir editions.
Among the rarities in this department is a folio
copy of Plautus, printed at Venice in 15 18, and
illustrated with woodcuts."

The author thus coming upon a Roman writer of
plays, named Plautus, favours us with an account of
him, which it is unnecessary to pursue, since it by
no means possesses the interest attached to his still-
life sketches. Let us pass on and take a peep at
the collection of Chancellor Kent, known in this
country as the author of Kent's Commentary: —

"To a lawyer, the Chancellor's written remarks
on his books are, perhaps, their most interesting
feature. He studied pen in hand, and all of his
books contain his annotations, and some are literary
curiosities. His edition of Blackstone's Commen-
taries is the first American edition, printed in Phil-
adelphia in 1 77 1. It is creditable to the press of
that time, and is overlaid with annotations, showing
how diligently the future American commentator
studied the elegant work of his English predecessor.
The general reader will find still more interest in
the earlier judicial reports of the State of New
York, printed while he was on the bencL He will

Creation of Libraries. 185

find not merely legal notes, but biographical memo-
randa of many of the distinguished judges and
lawyers, who lived at the commencement of the
century, and built up the present system of laws.

" In proceeding from the legal to the miscellane-
ous part of the library, the visitor's attention will,
perhaps, be attracted by an extensive and curious
collection of the records of criminal law. Not
merely the English state trials and the French
causes celkbres are there, but the criminal trials of
Scotland and of America, and detached publications
of remarkable cases, Newgate Calendars, Malefac-
tors' Register, Chronicles of Crime, with ghastly
prints of Newgate and Old Bailey, with their ex-
ecutions. The Chancellor is not responsible for this
part of the library, which owes its completeness to
the morbid taste of his successor, who defends the
collection as best illustrating the popular morals
and manners of every period, and contends that
fiction yields in interest to the gloomy dramas of
real life."

The practice attributed to the Chancellor of anno-
tating his books is looked on by collectors as in the
general case a crime which should be denied benefit
of clergy. What is often said, however, of other
crimes may be said of this, that if the perpetrator
be sufficiently illustrious, it becomes a virtue. If
Milton, for instance, had thought fit to leave his
-autograph annotations on the first folio Shake-

1 86 His Functions.

speare, the offence wQuld not only have been par-
doned but applauded, greatly to the pecuniary
benefit of any one so fortunate as to discover the
treasure. But it would be highly dangerous for
ordinary peoplfe to found on such an irainunity. I
remember being once shown by an indignant col-
lector a set of utterly and hopelessly destroyed
copies of i^ai-e tracts connected with the religious
dispute's of. QUeen Elizabeth's day, each inlaid and
separately bound in a thin volume in the finest
morocco, with the title lengthways along the back.
These had been lerlt to a gentleman who deemed
himself a distinguished poetj and he thought proper
to write on the margin the sensations caused within
him by the perusal of some of the more striking
passages, certifying the genuiherless of his autograph
by' his signature at full length in a bold distinct
hand. He, worthy man, deemed that he was adding
greatly to the value of the rarities ; but had he
beheld the owner's face on occasion of the discovery,
he would have been undeceived.
-. There are in Dr Wynne's book descriptions, not
only of libraries according to their kind, but accord-
ing to their stage of growth, from those which, as
the work of a generation or two, have reached from
ten to fifteen thousand, to the collections still in
their youth, such as Mr Lorimer Graham's of five
thousand volumes, rich in early editions of British
poetry, and dbubtless, by this time, still richer, since

Creation of Libraries. 187

its owner was lately here collecting early works on
the literature of Scotland, and other memorials of
the land of his fathers. Certainly, however, the
most interesting of the whole is the library of the
Rev. Dr Magoon, " an eminent and popular divine
of the Baptist Church." He entered on active life
as an operative bricklayer. There are, it appears,
wall -plates extant, and not a few, built by his
hands, and it was only by saving the earnings these
brought to him that he could obtain an education.
When an English mechanic finds out that he has
a call to the ministry, we can easily figure the grim
ignorant fanatical ranter that comes forth as the
result. If haply he is able to read, his library will
be a few lean sheepskin-clad volumes, such as Bos-
ton's Crook in the Lot, Fisher's Marrow of Modern
Divinity, Brooks's Apples of Gold, Bolton's Saint's
Enriching Examination, and Halyburton's Great
Concern. The bricklayer, however, was endowed
with the heavenly gift of the high aesthetic, which
no birth or breeding can secure, and threw him-
self into that common ground where art and reli-
gion meet — the literature of Christian medieval art.
Things must, however, have greatly changed among
our brethren since the days of Cotton Mather, or
even of Jonathan Edwards, when a person in Dr
Magoon's position could embellish his private sanc-
tuary in this fashion.

"The chief characteristic of the collection is its

1 8b His Functions.

numerous works on the history, literature, and theory
of art in general, and of Christian architecture in
particular. There is scarcely a church, abbey, mon-
astery, college, or cathedral ; or picture, statue, or
illumination, prominent in Christian art, extant in
Italy, Germany, France, or the British Islands, that
is not represented either by original drawings or in
some other graphic form.

" In addition to these works, having especial re-
ference to Christian art, are many full sets of folios
depicting the leading galleries of ancient, medieval,
and modern art in general. Some of these, as the
six elephant folios on the Louvre, are in superb
bindings ; while many others, among which are the
Dresden Gallery and , Retzsch's Outlines, derive an
additional value from once having formed a part of
the elegant collection of William Reginald Cour-
tenay.

"But what renders this collection particularly
valuable, is its large number of original drawings
by eminent masters which accompany the written
and engraved works. Amongst these are two large
sepia drawings, by Amici, of the Pantheon and St
Peter's at Rome. These drawings were engraved
and published with several others by Ackermann.
Both the originals, and the engravings executed from
them, are in the collection. The original view near
the Basilica of St Marco, by Samuel Prout, the en-
graving of which is in Finden's Byron, and the

Creation of Libraries. 189

interior of St Marco, by Luke Price, the engraving
of which is in Price's Venice Illustrated, grace the
collection. There is likewise a superb general view
of Venice, by Wyld ; a fine exterior view of Rheims
Cathedral, by Buckley; an exterior view of St
Peter's at Caen, by Charles Vacher ; and the inte-
rior of St Germain des Pr^s at Paris, by Duval."

The early history of the American settlements is
naturally the object around which many of these
collections cluster ; but the scraps of this kind of
literature which have been secured have a sadly
impoverished aspect in comparison with the luxuri-
ous stores which American money has attracted from
the Old World.^ Here one is forcibly reminded of

1 "This collection [Mr Menzies's] contains four thousand volumes,
and is for the most part in the English langus^e. Its chief specialty
consists in works on American history and early American printed
books. Among the latter may be mentioned a series of the earliest
works issued from the press in New York. Of these, is A Letter of
Advice to a Young Gentleman, by R. L., printed and sold by Wil-
liam Bradford, in New York, 1696. Richard Lyon, the author, came
early to this country, and officiated as a private tutor to a young
English student at Cambridge, to whom the letter of advice was
written. It is undoubtedly the earliest work which issued from the
press in New York, and is so extremely rare, that it is questionable
whether another copy is to be found in the State. There is a col
lection of tracts comprised in seven volumes, written by the Rev,
George Keith, and published by Bradford, at New York, 1702-4,
Keith was bom in Scotland, and settled in East Jersey, in the capa-
city of surveyor-general, in 1682. The several tracts in the collec
tion are on religious subjects, and are controversial in their character.
As early specimens of printing, and as models of the manner in
which the religious controversies of the day were conducted, they are
both instructive and curious. In addition to these is a work entitled

igo His Functions.

those elements in the old-established libraries of
Europe which no wealth or zeal can achieve else-
where, because the commodity is not in the niarket.

America had just one small old library, and the
lamentation over the loss of this ewe-lamb is touch-
ing evidence of her poverty in such possessions.
The Harvard Library dates from the year 1638.
In 1764 the college buildings were burned, and
though books are not easily consumed, yet the
small collection of five thousand volumes was over-
whelmed in the general ruin. So were destroyed
many books from the early presses of the mother
country, and many of the firstlings of the trans-
atlantic printers ; and though its bulk was but that
of an ordinary country squire's collection, the loss
has been always considered national and irreparable.

It is, after all, a rather serious consideration —
which it never seems as yet to have occurred to
any one to revolve — how entirely the new states of
the West and the South seem to be cut off from the

The Rebuker Rebuked, by Daniel Leeds, 1703; A Sermon preached
at Kingston in Jamaica, by William Corbin, 1703 ; The Great Mys-
tery of Foxcraft, by Daniel Leeds, 1705 ; A Sermon preached at
Trinity Church, in New York, by John Sharp, 1706; An Alarm
Sounded to the Inhabitants of the World, by Bath Bowers, 1709;
and Lex Parliamentaria, 1716. All the above works were printed
by Bradford, the earliest New York publisher, and one of the earliest
printers in America. They constitute, perhaps, the most complete
collection in existence of the publications of this early typographer.
The whole are in an excellent state of preservation, and are nearly,
if not quite, unique."

Creation vf Libraries. 191

literary, resources which the Old World possessed
in her old libraries. Whatever light lies - hidden
beneath the bushel in these venerable institutions,
seems for ever denied to the students and inquirers
of the new empire rising in the antipodes, and. con-
sequently to the minds of the people at large who
receive , impressions from students and inquirers.
Books can be .reprinted, it is true ; but where is
the likelihood that seven hundred thousand old
volumes will be reprinted to put the Astorian
Library on a par with the Imperial ? Well, per-
haps some quick and cheap way will be found of
righting it all when the Aerial Navigation Com-
pany issues its time-bills, and news come of battles
"from the nation's airy navies grappling in the
central blue."

- In the meantinie, what a lesson do these matters
impress on us of the importance of preserving old
books ! Government and legislation have done little,
if anything, in Britain, towards this object, beyond
the separate help that may have been extended to
individual public libraries, and the Copyright Act
deposits. Of general measures, it is possible to
point out some which have been injurious, by lead-
ing to the dispersal or destruction of books. The
house and window duties have done this to a large
extent. As this statement may not be quite self-
evident, a word in explanation may be appropriate.
The practice of the department having charge of

192 His Functions.

the Assessed Taxes has been, when any furniture
was left in an unoccupied house, to levy the duty —
to exempt only houses entirely empty. It was a
consequence of this that when, by minority, family
decay, or otherwise, a mansion-house had to be shut
up, there was an inducement entirely to gut it of
its contents, including the library. The same cause,
by the way, has been more destructive still to fur-
niture, and may be said to have lost to our posterity
the fashions of a generation or two. Tables, chairs,
and cabinets first grow unfashionable, and then
old ; in neither stage have they any friends who
will comfort or support them — they are still worse
off than books. But then comes an after-stage, in
which they revive as antiquities, and become ex-
ceeding precious. As Pompeiis, however, are rare
in the world, the chief repositories of antique fur-
niture have been mansions shut up for a generation
or two, which, after more fashions than generations
have passed away, are reopened to the light of day,
either in consequence of the revival of the fortunes
of their old possessors, or of their total extinction
and the entry of new owners. How the house and
window duties disturbed this silent process by which
antiques were created is easily perceived.

One service our Legislature has done for the pre-
servation of books in the copies which require to
be deposited under the Copyright Act at Stationers'
Hall for the privileged libraries. True, this has

Creation of Libraries. 193

been effected somewhat in the shape of a burden
upon authors, for the benefit of that posterity which
has done no more for them specially than it has
for other people of the present generation. But in
its present modified shape the burden should not
be grudged, in consideration of the magnitude of
the benefit to the people of the future — a benefit
the full significance of which it probably requires a
little consideration to estimate. The right of receiv-
ing a copy of every book from Stationers' Hall has
generally been looked on as a benefit to the library
receiving it. The benefit, however, was but lightly
esteemed by some of these institutions, the directors
of which represented that they were thus pretty
well supplied with the unsaleable rubbish, while
the valuable publications slipped past them ; and,
on the whole, they would sell their privilege for a
very small annual sum, to enable them to go into
the market and buy such books, old and new, as
they might prefer. The view adopted by the law,
however, was, that the depositing of these books
created an obligation if it conferred a privilege, the
institution receiving them having no right to part
with them, but being bound to preserve them as
a record of the literature of the age.i

If the rule come ever to be thoroughly enforced,

1 I am not aware that in the blue-books, or any other source of
public information, there is any authenticated statement of the
quantity of literature which the privileged libraries receive through

N

194 fii^ Func^ig-m,

it will then come to pass that of every boqk that is
printed in Britain, good or bad, , five copies shall
be preserved in the shelves oi so many public lib-
raries, slumbering there in peace, or tossed about
by impatient readers, as the case may be. For the
latter there need not perhaps be much anxiety ; it
is for the sake of those addicted to slumbering in
peaceful, obscurity that this refuge is valuable.
There is thus at lea.st a remnant saved from the
relentless trunks maker. If the day of resuscita-
tion from the long sluipber should arrive, we know
where to find the book^-in a privileged library. The
recollection just now occurs to me of a man of

the Copyright Act. The information would afford a measure of the
fertility of the British press. It is rathciteurious, that for a morsel
of tWs kind of ordinary modern statistics, one must have recourse
to so scholarly a work as the quarto volume of the Prafationes et
Efistola Edi^onibus principibus y^ucto-ntm Veterum praposita, curante
Beriah Botfield, A.M. The editor of that rioble quarto obtained a
return from Mr Winter Jones, of the number of deposits in the
British Museum from 1814 to i86o. Counting the "pieces," as they
are called — that is, every volume, pamphlet, page of music, and
other publication — the total number received in 1814 was 378. It
increased by steady gradation until 1851, when it- reached 9871..
It then got an impulse, from a determination more strictly to enforce
the Act, and next year the ntitnber rose to 13,934, and ia 1859 it
reached 28,807. In this grea.t mass, the number of books coming
forth complete in one volume or more is roundly f ^timated at 5000,
but a quantity of the separate numbers and parts which go to make
up the total are elementary portions of books, giving forth a certain
number of completed volumes annually. From the same authority,
it appears that^ tlje total nunii|ber of publications which issued from
the Frenclji, press in 1858 was estimated at I3,cxxi ; ^jut this includes
"sermons, pamphlets, plays, pieces of music, an^, engravings." In

Creation of Libraries. 195

unquestionable character and scholarship, who wrote
a suitable and ihtelligent book on an important
subject, and at his own expense had it brought into
the world by a distinguished publisher, prudently
intimating on the title-page that he reserved the
right of translation. Giving the work all due time
to find its way, he called at the Row, exactly a
year after the day of publication, to ascertain the
result. He was presented with a perfectly succinct
account of charge and discharge, in which he was
credited with three copies sold. Now, he knew that
his family had bought two copies, but he never
could find out who it was that had bought the

the same year the issues from the German press, Austria not included,
are estimated at 10,000^ all apparently actual volumes, or consider-
able pamphlets. Austria in 1855 published 4673 volumes and parts.
What a contrast to all this it must be to live in sleepy Norway,
where the annual literary prowess produces 146 volumes ! In
Holland the annual publications approach 2000. "During the
year 1854, 861 works in the Russian language, and 451 in foreign
languages were printed in Russia ; besides 2940, scientific and liter-
ary treatises in the different periodicals." The number of works
anywhere published is, however, no indication of the number of
books put in circulation, since some will have to be multiplied by
tens, others by hundreds, and others by thousands. We know that
there is an immense currency of literature in the American States,
yet, of the quantity of literature issued there, the Publishers' Circular
for February 1859 gives the following- meagre estimate: — "There
were 912 works ptiblished in America during 1858. Of these 177
were reprints from England, 35 were new editions, and 10 were
translations from the French or German. X^e new American works
thus number only 690, and among them are included sermons,
pamphlets, and letters, whereas the reprints are in most cases honC
fide books. >

196 His Functions.

third. The one mind into which his thoughts had
thus passed, remained ever mysteriously undiscover-
able. Whether or not he consoled himself with the
reflection that what might have been diffused over
many was concentrated in one, it is consolatory to
others to reflect that such a book stands on record
in the privileged libraries, to come forth to the
world if it be wanted.

Nor is the resuscitation of a book unsuited to its
own age, but suited to another, entirely unexampled.
That beautiful poem called Albania was reprinted
by Leyden, from a copy preserved somewhere : so
utterly friendless had it been in its obscurity, that
the author's history, and even his name, were un-
known ; and though it at once excited the high
admiration of Scott, no scrap of intelligence con-
cerning it could be discovered in any quarter con-
temporary with its first publication. The Discourse
on Trade by Roger North, the author of the amusing
Lives of Lord-Keeper Guildford and his other two
brothers, was lately reprinted from a copy in the
British Museum, supposed to be the only one exist-
ing. Though neglected in its own day, it has been
considered worthy of attention in this, as promulgat-
ing some of the principles of our existing philosophy
of trade. On the same principle, some rare tracts
on political economy and trade were lately reprinted
by a munificent nobleman, who thought the doc-
trines contained in them worthy of preservation

Creation of Libraries. 197

and promulgation. The Spirit of Despotism, by
Vicesimus Knox, was reprinted, at a time when its
doctrines were popular, from a single remaining
copy : the book, though instructive, is violent and
declamatory, and it is supposed that its author dis-
couraged or endeavoured to suppress its sale after
it was printed.

In the public duty of creating great libraries^ and
generally of preserving the literature of the world
from being lost to it, the collector's or book-hunter's
services are eminent and numerous. In the first
place, many of the great public libraries have been
absolute donations of the treasures to which some
enthusiastic literary sportsman has devoted his life
and fortune. Its gradual accumulation has been the
great solace and enjoyment of his active days ; he
has beheld it, in his old age, a splendid monument
of enlightened exertion, and he resolves that, when
he can no longer call it his own, it shall preserve the
relics of past literature for ages yet to tome, and
form a centre whence scholarship and intellectual
refinement shall diffuse themselves around. We can
see this influence in its most specific and material
shape, perhaps, by looking round the reading-room
of the British Museum — that great manufactory of
intellectual produce, where so many heads are at
work. Thel beginning of this great institution, as
everybody knows, was in the fifty thousand volumes
collected by Sir Hans Sloane — a wonderful, achieve-

198 His Functions.

ment for a private gentleman at the beginning of
the last century. When George III. gave it the
libraries of the kings of England, it gained, as it
were, a better start still by absorbing collections
which had begun before Sloane was born— ^those of
Cranmer, Prince Henry, and Casaubon. The Am-
brosian Library at Milan was the private collection
of Cardinal Borromeo, bequeathed by him to the
world. It reached forty thousand volumes ere he
died, and these formed a library which had arisen
in free, natural, and symmetrical growth^ insomuch
as, having fed it during his whole life, it began with
the young and economic efforts of youth and poverty,
and went on accumulating in bulk and in the costli-
ness of '■ its contents as succeeding years brought
wealth and honours to the great prelate. What
those merchant princes, the Medici, did for the
Laurentian Library at Florence is part of history.
Old Cosmo, who had his mercantile and political
correspondents in all lands, made them also his lit-
erary agents, who thus sent him goods too precious
to be resold even at a profit. " He corresponded,"
says Gibbon, "at once with Cairo and London, and
a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often
imported by the same vessel." The Bodleian started
with a collection which had cost Sir Thomas Bodley
;^ 1 0,000, and it was augmented from time to time
by the absorption of tributary influxes of the same
kind. Some far-seeing promoters of national muse-

Creation of Libraries, 1 99

ums have reached the conclusion that it is not a
sound ultimate policy to press too closely on the
private collector. He is thdrefdfe pefmitted, under
a certain amount cif watchful inspection, to accumu-
late his small treasury of antiquities, shells, or dried
plants, in the prospect that in the course of time it
will find its way, like' the feeding fills of a lake, into
th6 great public treasury.^

In many instances the collectors whose stores
have thus gone to the public, have merely followed
their hunting propensities, without having the merit
of framing the ultimate destiny of their collections,
but in others the intention of doing benefit to the
world has added zest and energy to the chase. Of
this class there is one memorable and beautiful in-
stance in Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durbarh, who
lived and laboured so early as the days of Edward
III., and has left an autobiographical sketch infin-
itely valuable, as at once informing us of the social
habits, and letting us into the very inner life, of the
highly endowed studetit and the affluent collector
of the fourteenth century. His little book, called
Philobibliott, was brought to light from an older
obsctife' edition by the scholar printer Badiiis As-
censitis, and was the first fruit of his press when

1 The most complete mass of iiiformatioii which We probably possess
in the English language about the history of libraries, both home and
foreign, is in the two octavos called Memoirs of Libraries, including
a Handbook of Library Concerns, by Edward Edwards.

200 His Functions.

he set it up in Paris in the year 1499. An Eng-
lish translation of it was published in 1832. It is
throughout adorned with the gentle and elevated
nature of the scholar, and derives a still nobler lustre
from the beneficent purpose to which the author
destined the literary relics which it was the enjoy-
ment of his life to collect and study.. Being en-
dowed with power and wealth, and putting to him-
self the questiori, "What can I render to the Lord
for all that he hath conferred on me?" he found
an answer in the determination of smoothing the
path of the poor and ardent student, by supplying
him with the means of study. " Behold," he says,
"a herd of outcasts rather than of elect scholars
meets the view of our contemplations, in which God
the artificer, and nature his handmaid, have planted
the roots of the best, niorals and most celebrated
sciences. But the penury of their private affairs so
oppresses them, being opposed by adverse fortune,
that the fruitful seeds of virtue, so productive in the
unexhausted field of youth, unmoistened by their
wonted dews, are compelled to wither. Whence it
happens, as Boetius says, that bright virtue lies hid
in obscurity, and the burning lamp is not put under
a bushel, but is utterly extinguished for want of oil.
Thus the flowery field in spring is ploughed up be-
fore harvest; thus wheat gives way to tares, the vine
degenerates to woodbine, and the olive grows wild

Creation of Libraries. 201

and unproductive." Keenly alive to this want, he
resolved to devote himself, not meirely to supply
to the hungry the necessary food,, but to impart
to the poor and ardent scholar the mental susten-
ance which might possibly enable him to burst the
bonds of circumstance, and, triumphing over his
sordid lot, freely communicate to mankind the bless-
ings which it is the function of cultivated genius to
distribute.

The Bishop was a great and powerful man, for
he went over Europe commissioned as the spiritual
adviser of the great conqueror, Edward III. Wher-
ever he went on public business — to Rome, France,
or the other states of Europe — "on tedious embas-
sies and in perilous times," he carried about with
him "that fondness for books which many waters
could not extinguish," and gathered up all that his
power, his wealth, and his vigilance brought within
his reach. In Paris he becomes quite ecstatic : " Oh
blessed God of gods in Zion ! what a rush of the
glow of pleasure rejoiced our heart as often as we
visited Paris — the Paradise of the world ! There
we longed to remain, where, on account of the great-
ness of our love, the days ever appeared to us to be
few. There are delightful libraries in cells redolent
of aromatics— th^e flourishing greenhouses of all
sorts of volumes : there academic meads trembling
with the earthquake of Athenian peripatetics pacing

202 His F%mctiOns:

up and down : thete the pfofliontcrfies of Parnassus
and the porticos of the stoics."

The most powerful instrument in his policy was
encouraging and bringing round hirti, as dependents
and followers, the members of the mendicant orders
— the labourers called to the vineyard in the eleventh
hour, as he calls theni. These he set to cater for
him, and he triuniphantly asks, "Among so many
of the keenest hunters, what leveret could lie hid ?
What fry could evade the hook, the net, or the
trawl of these men? From the body of divine
law down to the latest controversial tract of the
day, nothing could escape the notice of these scruti-
nisers." In further revelations of his method he
says, "When, indeed, we happened to turn aside
to the towns and places where the aforesaid paupers
had convents, we were nOt slack in visiting their
chests and bther repositories of boOks ; for there,
amidst the deepest poverty, we found the most
exalted riches treasured up ; there, in their satchels
and caskets, we discovered not only the crumbs that
fell from the master's table for the little dogs, but,
indeed, the shew-bread without leaven — the bread
of angels containing all that is delectable." He
specially marks the zedl of the Dominicans or
Preachers ; and in exulting over his success in the
field, he affords curioUs glimpses into the ways of
the various humble assistants who were glad to

Creation of Libraries. 203

lend themselves to the hobby of one of the most
powerful prelates of his day.^

The manner in which Richard of Bury dedicated
his stores to the intellectual nurture of the poor
scholar, was by converting them into a library for
Durham College, which merged into Trinity of Ox-
ford. It would have been a pleasant thing to look
upon the actual collection of manuscripts which
awakened so much recorded zeal and tenderness in
the great ecclesiastic of five hundred years ago ; but
in later troubles they became dispersed, and all that

1 ' ' Indeed, although we had obtained abundance both of old and
new works, through an extensive communication with all the religious
orders, yet we must in justice extol the Preachers with a special com-
mendation in this respect ; for we found them, above all other reli-
gious devotees, ungrudging of their most acceptable communications,
and overflowing with a certain divine liberality ; we experienced
them not to be , selfish hoarders, but meet professors of enlightened
knowledge. Besides all the opportunities already touched upon, we
easily acquired the notice of the stationers and librarians, not only
within the provinces of our natiye soil, but of those dispersed over
the kingdoms of France, Germany, and Italy, by the prevailing
power of money ; no distance whatever impeded, no fury of the sea
deterred them ; nor was cash wanting for their expenses, when they
sent or brought us the wished-for, books ; for they knew to a certainty
that their hopes reposed in our bosoms could not be disappointed,
but ample redemption, with interest, was secure with us. Lastly, our
common captivatrix of the love of all men (money), did not neglect
the rectors of country schools, nor the pedagogues of clownish boys,
but rather, when we had leisure to enter their little gardens and
paddocks, we culled redolent flowers upon the surface, and dug up
neglected roots (not, however, useless to the studious), and such
coarse digests of barbarism, as with the gift of eloquence might be
made sanative to the pectoral arteries. Ampngst productions of this

204 His Functions.

seems to be known of their whereabouts is, that
some of them are in the library of Baliol.^ Another
eminent English prelate made a worthy, but equally
ineffectual, attempt to found a great university lib-
rary. This was the Rev. John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, who gave what was called "the noblest
library in England " to the newly founded college
of St John's. It was not a bequest. To make his
gift secure, it was made over directly to the college,
but as he could not part with his favourites while
he lived, he borrowed the whole back for life. This
is probably the most extensive book loan ever ne-

kind, we found many most worthy of renovation, which, when the
foul rust was skilfully polished off, and the mask of old age removed,
deserved to be once more remodelled into comely countenances, and
which we, having applied a sufficiency of the needful means, resusci-
tated for an exemplar of future resurrection, having in some measure
restored them to renewed soundness. Moreover, there was always
about us in our halls no small assemblage of antiquaries, scribes,
bookbinders, correctors, illuminators, and, generally, of all such
persons as were qualified to labour advantageously in the service of
books.

"To conclude; All of either sex, of every degree, estate, or
dignity, whose pursuits were in any way connected vnith books, could,
with a knock, most easily open the door of our heart, and find a
convenient reposing place in our bosom. We so admitted all who
brought books, that neither the multitude of first-comers could pro-
duce a fastidiousness of the last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday
be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually
resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant
attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and
a multifarious flight of the best volumes were made to us. And this
is what we undertook to relate at large in the present chapter."

^ Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 586.

The Preservation of Literature. 205

gotiated ; but the Reformation, and his own tragic
destiny, were coming on apace, and the books were
lost both to himself and his favourite college.^

2Df)e ^teatrijatum of %!AzxsXixn.

|HE benefactors whose private collections
have, by a generous act of endowment,
been thus rendered at the same time
permanent and public, could be counted
by hundreds. It is now, however, my function to
describe a more subtle, but no less powerful influ-
ence which the book-hunter exercises in the preser-
vation and proniulgation of literature, through the
mere exercise of that instinct or passion which
makes him what he is here called. What has been
said above must have suggested — if it was not seen
before — how great a pull it gives to any public
library, that it has had an early start ; and how
hard it is, with any amount of wealth and energy,
to make up for lost time, and raise a later institu-
tion to the level of its senior. The Imperial Lib-
rary of Paris, which has so marvellously lived
through all the storms that have swept round its
walls, was founded in the fourteenth century. It
began, of course, with manuscripts ; possessing, be-

^ Edwards on Libraries, vol. i. p. 609.

2o6 His Functions.

fore the beginning of the fifteenth century, the then
enormous number of a thousand volumes. The
reason, however, of its present greatness, so far
beyond the rivalty of later establishments, is, that
it was in active operation at the birth of printing,
and, received the first-born of the press. There
they have been sheltered and preserved, while their
unprotected brethren, tossed about in the world
outside, have long disappeared, and passed out of
existence for ever.

Among the popular notions passing current as
duly certified axioms, just because they have never
been questioned and examined, one is, that, since
the age of printing, no book once put to press has
ever died. The notion is quite inconsistent with
fact. When we count by hundreds of thousands the
books that are in the Paris Library, and not to be
had for the British Museum, we know the number
of books which a chance refuge has protected from
the general destruction, and can readily see, in
shadowy bulk, though we cannot estimate in num-
bers, the great mass which, having found no refuge,
have disappeared out of separate existence, and been
mingled up with the other elements of the earth's
crust.

We have many accounts of the marvellous preser-
vation of books after they have become rare — the
snatching of them as brands from the burning;
their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly

The Preservation of Literature. 207

breach. It would be interesting, also, to have some
account of the progress of destruction among books.
A work dedicated apparently to this object, which
I have been unable to find in the body, is men-
tioned under a very tantalising title. It is by a
certain John Charles Conrad Oelrichs, author of
several scraps of literary history, and is called a
Dissertation concerning the Fateg of Libraries and
Books, and, in the first place, concerning the books
that have been eaten — such I take to be the mean-
ing of " Dissertatio de Bibliothecarum ac Librorum
Fatis, iniprimis libris comestis." This is nearly as
tantalising as the wooden-legged Britisher's explan-
ation to the inquisitive Yankee, who solemnly en-
gaged to ask not another question were he told how
that leg was lost, and was accordingly told that " it
was bitten off."

Nor is there anything to allay the curiosity thus
excited in finding that the French, in the aU-com-
prehensive spirit of their classification and nomen-
clature, include the book-eater with the decorous
title Bibliophage, seeing that in so gossiping a work
as Peignot's Dictionnaire de Bibliologie, all that is
communicated under this department is, "Biblio-
phage signifie celui qui mange des livres." We are
not favoured \vith any examples explanatory of the
kind of books most in demand by those addicted to
this species of food, nor of the effect of the different
classes of books on the digestive organs.

2o8 His Functions.

Religious and political intolerance has, as all the
world knows, been a terrible enemy to literature,
not only by absolute suppression, but by the re-
straints of the licenser. So little was literary free-
dom indeed understood anywhere until recent days,
that it was only by an accident after the Revolution
that the licensing of books was abolished in Eng-
land. The new licenser, Edmond Bohun, happened
in fact to be a Jalcobite, and though he professed
to confbrm to the Revolution Settlement, his sym-
pathies with the exiled house disabled him from
detecting disaffection skilfully smothered, and the
House of Commons, in a rage, abolished his office
by refusing to renew the Licensing Act. Of the
extent to which literature has suffered by suppres-
sion, there are no data for a precise estimate. It
might bring out some curious results, however, were
any investigator to tell us of the books which had
been effectually put down after being in existence.
It would of course be found that the weak were
crushed, while the strong flourished. Among the
valuable bibliographical works of Peignot, is a dic-
tionary of books which have been condemned to the
flames, suppressed, or censured. We do not require
to go far through his alphabet to see how futile the
burnings and condemnations have been in their
effect on the giants of literature. The first name
of all is that of Abelard, and so going on we pick up
the witty scamp Aretin, then pass on to D'Aubignd

The Preservation of Literature. 209

the great warrior and historian, Bayle, Beaumarchais,
Boulanger, Catullus, Charron, Condillac, Crdbillon,
and so on, down to Voltaire and Wicliffe.

Wars and revolutions have of course done their
natural work on many libraries, yet the mischief
effected by them has often been more visible than
real, since they have tended rather to dispersion than
destruction. The total loss to literature by the dis-
persion of the libraries of the monastic establish-
ments in England, is probably not nearly so great as
that which has accompanied , the chronic moulder-
ing away of the treasures preserved so obstinately
by the lazy monks of the Levant,, who were found
by Mr Curzon at their public devotions laying down
priceless volumes which they: could not read, to
protect their dirty feet from the cold floor. In the
wildest times the book repository often partakes in
the good fortune of the humble student whom the
storm passes over. In the hour of danger, too, some
friend who keeps a quiet eye upon its safety may
interpose at the critical moment. The treasures of
the French libraries were certainly in terrible danger
when Robespierre had before him the draft of a
decree, that "the books of the public libraries of
Paris and the departments should no longer be per-
mitted to offend the eyes of the republic by shame-
ful marks of servitude." The word would have
gone forth, and a good deal beyond the mere marks
of servitude would have been doubtless destroyed,

O

2IO His Functions.

had not the emergency called forth the courage and
energies of Renouard.and Didot.* '

There are probably false impressionis abroad as
to the susceptibility of literature ' to destruction by
fire. Books' are not good fuel, as, fortUnatfely, many
a housexnaid has found, when, among other frantic
efforts and failures in fire-lighting, she has reasoned
from the. false data of the inflammability of a piece
of paper. In the days when heretical books were
burned, it was necessary to place them on large
wooden stagesj and after all the pains taken to
demolish them, considerable readable masses were
sometimes found in the embers ; whence it was sup-
posed that the devil, conversant in fire and its
effects, gave them his special protection. In the
end it was found easier and cheaper to burn the
heretics themselves than their books.

Thus books can be burned, but they don't burn,
and though in great fir^s libraries have been wholly
or partially destroyed, we never hear of a library
making a great conflagration like a cotton mill 'or
a tallow warehouse. Nay, a story is told of a house
seeming irretrievably on iire, until the flames, com-
ing in contact with the folio Corpus Juris and the
Statutes at Large, were quite unable to get over
this joint barrier, and sank defeated. When any-
thing is said about the burning of libraries, Alex-

. 1 Edwards on Libraries^ vol. ii. p. 272.

The Presetiiation of Literature. 211

andria at once flares up in the memory ; but it- is
strange how little of a satisfactory kind investigators
have ibeen able to make out, either about the forma-
tion or destruction of the many famous libraries
collected from time to time in that ■ city. There
seems little doubt that Caesar's auxiliaries uninten-
tionally burnt one of them ; its contents were
probably written on papyrus, a material about as
inflammable as dried reeds or wood-shavings. As
to that other burning in detail, when the collection
was used for fuel to the baths, and lasted some six
weekS' — surely never was there a greater victim of
historical prejudice arid calumny than the " ignorant
and fanatical " Caliph Omar al Raschid. Over and
over has this act been disproved, and yet it will
continue to be reasserted with uniform pertinacity
in successive rolling sentences, all as like each other
as the successive billows in a swell at sea.-'

Apart, however, from violence and accident, there
is a constant decay of books from what might be
called natural causes, keeping, like the decay of

^ One of the latest inquirers who has gone over the ground con-
cludes his evidence thus : "Omar ne vint pas a Alexandria ; et s'il
y fut venu, il n'eut pas trouve des livres 4 bruler. La bibliotheque
n'existait plus depuis deux siecles et demi." — Foumier, L'Esprit dans
I'Histoire. What shall we say to the story told by Zonaras and
repeated by Pancirole, of the burning, in the reign of the Emperor
Basilisc, of the library of Constantinople, containing one hundred and
twenty thousand volumes, and among them a copy of the Iliad and
the Odyssey, written in golden letters on parchment made from the
intestines of the dr^on?

212 His Functions.

the human race, a proportion to their reproduction,
which varies according to place or circumstance ;
here showing a rapid increase where production
outruns decay, and there a decrease where the
morbid elements of annihilation are stronger than
the active elements of reproduction. Indeed, vol-
umes are in their varied external conditions very
like human beings. There are some stout and
others frail — some healthy and others sickly ; and
it happens often that the least robust are the most
precious. The full fresh health of some of the
folio fathers and schoolmen, ranged side by side
in solemn state on the oaken shelves of some
venerable repository, is apt to surprise those who
expect mouldy decay ; the stiff hard binding is
as angular as ever, — there is no abrasion of the
leaves, not a single dog-ear or a spot, or even a
dust-border on the mellowed white of the margin.
So, too, of those quarto civilians and canonists of
Leydeh and Amsterdam, with their smooth white
vellum coats, bearing so generic a resemblance to
Dutch cheeses, that they might be supposed to re-
present the experiments of some Gouda dairyman
on the quadrature of the circle. An easy life and
an established positiori in society are the secret of
their excellent preservation and condition. Their
repose has been little disturbed by intrusive readers
or unceremonious investigators, and their repute for
solid learning has given them a claim to attention

The Preservation of Literature. 213

and careful preservation. It has sometimes hap-
pened to me, as it probably has to many another
inquisitive person, to penetrate to the heart of one
of these solid volumes and find it closed in this
wise : — As the binder of a book is himself bound
to cut off as little as possible of its white margin,
it may take place, if any of the leaves are inaccu-
rately folded, that their edges are not cut, and that,
as to such leaves, the book is in the uncut condition
so often denounced by impatient readers. So have
I sometimes had to open with a paper-cutter the
pages which had shut up for two hundred years
that knowledge which the ponderous volume, like
any solemn holder-forth whom no one listens to,
pretended to be distributing abroad from its place
of dignity on the shelf Sometimes, also, there will
drop out of a heavy folio a little slip of orange-
yellow paper covered with some cabalistic-looking
characters, which a careful study discovers to be a
hint, conveyed in high or low Dutch, that the dealer
from whom the volume was purchased, about the,
time of some crisis in the Thirty Years' War, would
be rather gratified than otherwise should the pur-
chaser be pleased to remit to him the price of it.
Though quartos and folios are dwindling away,
like many other conventional distinctions of rank,:
yet are authors of the present day not entirely
divested of the opportunity of taking their place
on the shelf like these old dignitaries. It would

214 His Functions.

be as absurd, of course, to appear in folio as to
step abroad in the small-clothes and queue of our
great-grandfathers' day, and even quarto is reserved
for science and some departments of the law; But
then, on the other hand, octavos are growing as
large as some of the folios of the seventeenth- cen-
tury, and a solid roomy -lookitig book is still prac-
ticable. Whoever desires to achieve a sure, though
it may be but a humble, niche in the temple of
fame, let him write a few solid volumes with re-
spectably sounding titles, and matter that will
rather repel the reader than court him to such
familiarity as may beget contempt. Such books
are to the frequenter of a library like country gen-
tlemen's- seats to travellers, something to know the
name and ownership of in passing. The stage-
coachman of old used to proclaim each in suc-
cession — the guide-book tells them now. So do
literary 'guide-books in the shape of library-cata-
Ibgues and bibliographies, tell of these steady and
respectable mansions of literature. No one speaks
ill of them, or even proclaims his ignorance of their
nature; and your '' man who knows everything" will
profess some familiarity with them, the more readily
that the verity of his pretensions is not likely to 'be
tested. A man's name may have resounded for a
time through all the' newspapers as the gainer of a
great victory or the speaker of marvellous speeches
— he may have been the most brilliant wit of some

The Preservation of Literature. 215

distinguished social circle — the head of a great pro-
fession^-^eVen a leading statesman ; yet his memory
has utterly evaporated with the departure! of his
own generation. Had he but written one or two
of these solid books, now, ' his name would have
been perpetuated in catalogues and bibliographical
dictionaries ; nay, biographies and encyclopaedias
would contain their' titles, and perhaps' the day of
the author's birth and death. Let those who" desire
posthumous fame, counting recollectidtl' as equiva-
lent to fame, think of this.

It is with? no desire to further the arfflihilation or
decay of the stout and lorig-lived class of books of
which I 'have been speaking, that I nov<r' draw atten-
tion to the book'hunter's services in the preservation
of some that are of a more fragile nature, and are
liable to dtoop and decay. We can see the process
going on around us, just as we see other things tra-
velling towards extinction. Ldok, for instance, at
school-books, how rapidly and obviously they go to
ruin. True, there are plenty of them, but save of
those preserved in the privileged libraries, or of
some that may be tossed aside among lumber in
which they happen tO; remain until they become
curiosities, -what chance iS there of any of them
bemg in existence, a century hence? Collectors
know well the extrertle' rarity and value of ahcie'ht
school-ljppks. ; , Nor is theij" value by any means fan-
ciful. The dominie will tell us that they are old-

2i6 His Functions.

fashioned, and the pedagogue who keeps a school,
"and ca's it a acaudemy," will sneer at them as
"obsolete and incompatible with the enlightened
adjuncts of modern tuition ; " but if we are to con-
sider that. the condition of the human intellect at
any particular juncture is worth, studying, it is cer-
tainly of importance to know on what' food its in-
fancy is fed. And so of children's play-books as
well as their work-books ; these are as ephemeral
as their other toys. Retaining dear recollections
of some that were the favourites, and desiring to
awaken from them old recollections of careless boy-
hood, or perhaps to try whether your own children
inherit the paternal susceptibility to their beauties,
you make application to the bookseller — but, be-
hold, they have disappeared from existence as
entirely as the rabbits you fed, and the terrier
that followed you with his cheery clattering bark.
Neither name nor description — not the announce-
ment of the benevolent publishers, " Darton, Harvey,
and Darton" — can recover the faintest traces of
their vestiges.^ Old cookery-books, almanacs, books

^ I question if Toy Literature, as it may be called, has received the
consideration it deserve?, when one remembers how great an influ-
ence it must have on the formation of the infant mind. I am not
prepared to argue that it should be put under regulation — perhaps it
is best that it shpfild be left to the w|ld luxuriance of nature — but its
characteristics and influence are surely worthy of studious observa-
tion. It happened to me once to observe in the library of an emin-
ent divine a large heap of that Class of Works which used to be known

The Preservation of Literature. 217

of prognostication, directories for agricultural opera-
tions, guides to handicrafts, and other works of a
practical nature, are infinitely valuable when they
refer to remote times, and also infinitely rare.

But of course the most interesting of all are
the relics of pure literature, of poems and plays.
Whence have arisen all the anxious searches and
disappointments, and the bitter contests, and the
rare triumphs, about the early editions of Shake-
speare, separately or collectively, save from this,
that they peissed from one impatient hand to an-
other, and were subjected to an unceasing greedy
perusal, until they were at last used up, and put out
of existence ? True it was to be with him —

" So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky."

as "penny bookies.'' My reverend friend explained, in relation to
them, that they were intended to counteract some pernicious influ-
ences at work — that he had made the important and painful dis-
covery that the influence of this class of literature had been noticed
and employed by the enemies of the Church. In confirmation of
this view, he showed me some passages, of which I remember the
following : —

" B was a Bishop who loved his reposet
C was a Curate who had a red nose,"

D was a Dean, but how characterised I forget. I did not think,
however, that the proposed antidote, in which the mysteries of reli-
gion and the specialties of a zealous class in the English Church were
mixed up with childish prattle, was much more decorous or appro-
priate than what it was intended to counteract.

2 1 8 His Functions.

But his tuneful companions' who' had less vital
power have , lain' like some aneJbnt cemetery or
buried city, in which antiquaries' have been for a
long age digging and searching for some fragment
of intellectual treasure.'

One book, and that the mGst read of all, was
hedged by a sort of divinity which protected it, so
far as that was practicable, from the dilapidating
effects of use. The Bible seems to have been ever
touched with ' reverent gentleness, and, when the
sordid effects of long' handling had become inevi-
tably conspicuous, to have been generally removed
out of sight, and, aS it were, decently interred.
Hence it is that, of the old editions of the Bible,
the copies are so comparatively numerous and in
such fine preservation. Look at those two folios
from the types of Guttenburg and Fust, running so
far back into the earliest stage of the art of printing,
that of them is told the legend of a combination
with the devil, which epabled one man to write so
many copies identically the same. See how clean
and spotless is the paper, and how hlack, glossy,
and. distinct the type, telling us how little progress
printing has made since the days of its inventors,
in anything save the greater' rapidity with which,
in consequence pf the progress of machinery, it can
now be executed.

The reason ,of^ the extreme rarity of the books
printed by the early English printers is that, being

The Preservation of Literature. 219

very amusing, they were used up, thumbed out of
existence. Such were Caxton's Book of the Otdre
of Chyualry ; his Knyght of the Toure j the Myrour
of the World ; and the Golden Legende ; Cocke
Lorell's Bote, by De Worde ; his Kalender of
Shepeherdes, and suchlike. If any one feels an
interest in the process of exhaustion, by which such
treasures were reduced to rarity, he may easily
witness it in the dSbris of a circulating library ;
and perhaps he will find the phenomenon in still
more distinct operation at any book-stall where lie
heaps of school-books, odd volumes of novels, and
a choice of Watts's Hymns and Pilgrim's Progresses.
Here, too, it is possible that the enlightened on-
looker may catch sight of the book-hunter plying
his vocation, much after the manner in which, in
some ill-regulated town, he may have beheld the
chiffonniers, at early dawn, rummaging among the
cinder heaps for ejected treasures. A ragged morsel
is perhaps carefully severed from the heap, wrapped
in paper to keep its leaves together, and deposited
in the purchaser's pocket You would probably find
it difficult to recognise the fragment, if ypu should
see it in the brilliancy of its resuscitation. A skilled
and cautious workman has applied a bituininous sol-
vent to its ragged edges, and literally incorporated,
by a sort of paper-making process, each mouldering
page into a broad leaf of fine strong paper, in which
the print, according to a simile used for such occa-

2 20 His Functions.

sions, seems like a small rivulet in a wide meadow
of margin. This is termed inlaying, and is a very-
lofty department in the art of binding. Then there
is, besides, the grandeur of russia or morocco, with
gilding, and tooling, and marbling, and perhaps a
ribbon marker, dangling out with a decoration at its
end — all tending, like stars, and garters, and official
robes, to stamp the outer insignia of importance on
the book, and to warn all the world to respect it,
and save it from the risks to which the common
herd of literature is liable. The French have, as
usual, dignified the process which restores diseased
books to health and condition by, an appropriate
technical name — it is Bibliuguiancie ; and under
that title it will be found fitly and appropriately
discussed in the Dictionnaire de Bibliologie of
Peignot, who specially mentions two practitioners
of this kind as having conferred lustre on their
profession by their skill and success — Vialard and
Heudier.^

1 There is something exceedingly curious, not only in its bearing
on the matter of the text, but as a record of some peculiar manners
and habits of the fourteenth century, in Richard of Bury's injunctions
as to the proper treatment of the manuscripts which were read in his
day, and the signal contrast offered by the practice both of the clergy
and laity to his decorous precepts : —

"We not only set before ourselves a service to God in preparing
volumes of new books, but we exercise the duties of a holy piety, if
we first handle so as not to injure them, then return theni to their
proper places and commend them to undefiling custody, that they
may rejoice in thfeir purity while held in the hand, and repose in

The Preservation of Literature. 221

I have recourse to our old friend Monkbarns
again for a brilliant description of the prowler
among the book-stalls, in the performance of the
function assigned to him in the dispensation of
things, — renewing my already recorded protest
against the legitimacy of the commercial part of
the transaction : —

" ' Snuffy Davie bought the game of Chess, 1474,
the first book ever printed" in England, from a stall

security when laid up in their repositories. Truly, next to the vest-
, ments and vessels dedicated to the body of the Lord, holy books de-
serve to be most decorously handled by the clergy, upon which injury
js inflicted as often as they presume to touch them with a dirty hand.
Wherefore, we hold it expedient to exhort students upon various
negligencies which can always be avoided, but which are wonderfully
injurious to books. ,

" In the first place, then, let there be a mature decorum in opening
and closing of volumes, that they may neither be unclasped with pre-
cipitous haste, nor thrown aside after inspection without being duly
closed ; for it is necessary that a book should be much more carefully
preserved than a shoe. But school folks are in general perversely
educated, and, if not restrained by the rule of their superiors, are
puffed up with infinite absurdities ; they act with petulance, swell
with presumption, judge of everything with certainty, and are unex-
perienced in anything.

"You will perhaps see a stiff-necked youth, lounging sluggishly in
his study, while the frost pinches him in winter time, oppressed with
cold, his watery nose drops, nor does he take the trouble to wipe it
with his handkerchief till it has moistened the book beneath it with
its vile dew. For such a one I would substitute a cobbler's apron in
the place of his book. He has a nail like a giant's, perfumed with
stinking filth, with which he points out the place of any pleasant sub-
ject. He distributes innumerable straws in various places, with the
ends in sight, that he may recall by the mark what his memory cannot
retain. These straws, which the stomach of the book never digests,
and which nobody takes out, at first distend the book from its accus-

222 His Functions.

in Holland, for about two groschen, or twopence of
our money. He sold it to Osborne for twenty
pounds, and as many books as came to twenty
pounds more. ' Osborne resold this inimitable wind-
fall to Dr Askew foi' sixty guineas. At Dr Askew's
sale,' continued the old gentleman, kindling as he
spoke, ' this inestimable treasure blazed forth in its
full value, and was purchased by royalty itself for
one hundred and seventy pounds ! Could a copy

tomed closure, and, being carelessly left to oblivion, at last become
putrid. He is not ashamed to eat fruit and cheese over an open book,
and to transfer his empty cup from side to side upon it ; and because
he has not his 'alms-bag at hand, he leaves the rest of the fragments
in his books. He never ceases to chatter with eternal garrulity to
his companions ; and while he adduces a multitude of reasons void
of physical meaning, he waters the book, spread out upon his lap,
with the sputtering of his saliva.- What is worse, he next reclines
with his elbows on the book, and by a short study invites a long nap ;
and by way of repairing the wrinkles, he twists back the margins of
the leaves, to the no small detriment of the volume. He goes out in
the rain, and now flowers make their appearance upon our soil. Then
the scholar we are describing, the neglecter rather than the inspector
of books, stuffs his volume with firstling violets, roses, and quadri-
foils. He will next apply his wet hands, oozing with sweat, to turn-
ing over the volumes, then beat the white parchment all over with
his dusty gloves, or hunt over the page, line by line, with his fore-
finger covered with dirty leather. Then, as the flea bites, the holy
book is thrown aside, which, however, is scarcely closed in a month,
and is so swelled with the dust that has fallen into it, that it will not
yield to the efforts of the closer.

" But impudent boys are to be specially restrained from meddling
with books, who, when they are learning to draw the forms of letters,
if copies of the most beautiful books are allowed them, begin to be-
come incongruous annotators, and wherever they perceive the broad-
est margin about the text, they furnish it with a monstrous alphabet,
or their unchastened pen immediately presumes to draw any other

The Preservation of Literature. 223

now occur,, X<Wd, only, knows,' he ejaculated, with a
deep sJgh and Hfted-up hands, — ' Lord only knows
what would i be Us ransom ! — ^and yet it wsis origin-
ally secured, by skill and research, for the easy
equivalent of twopence sterling. Happy, ; thrice
happy, Snuffy Davie ! — and blessed were the times
when thy industry could be: so rewarded ! ' "

In such manner is it that books are saved from
annihilation, and that their preservers become the

frivolous :tJiii;^ whatever that occurs to their imagination. There the
Latinist, there the sophist,, there every sort pf unlearae^, ;scrihe tries
the goodness of his pen, which we have frequently seen to have beeri
most injurious to the fairest volumes, both as to utility and price.
There are E^lsp certain thieves iyho enormously .^^^emti^r books by
cutting off the side margins for letter-paper (leaving only the letters or
text), or the fly-leaves put in for the preservation of the book, which
they take away for .V3Jijflus uses ai^d abuses, which sort pf, sacrilege
ought to be prohibited under a threat of anathema.

"But it is altogether befitting the decency of a scholat thst wash-
ing should without fail precede reading, as often as he returns from
his meals to study, before his fingers, besnieared with grease, loosen
a clasp or turn over the leaf of a book. Let not a crying child admire
the dirawipgs in the capital letters, lest,heipDllute the parchment with
his wet fingers, for he instantly touches whatever he sees.

" Furthermore, laymen, to whom it matters not whether they look
at a book turned wrong side upwards or spread before them in its
natural order, are altogether unworthy of ^py communion, with books.
Let the clerk also take order that the dirty scullion, stinking from
the pots, do not touch the leaves of books unwashed ; but he who •
Pfiters without spot ^hall give hi? services to the precious v<)lumes.

"The cleanliness of delicate hands, as if scabs and postules could
not be clerical characteristics, might also be most important, as well
to books as to scholars, who, ^s often as they perceive defects, in
books, should attend to them instantly, for nothing enlarges mpre
quickly than a rent, as a fracture neglected at the time will afterwards
be repaired with increased trouble."— Philobiblion, p. loi.

224 His Functions.

feeders of the great collections in which, after their
value is established, they find refuge ; and herein it
is that the class to whom our attention is at present
devoted perforin an inestimable service to literature.
It is, as you will observe, the general ambition of
the class to find value where there seems to be none,
and this develops a certain skill and subtlety, en-
abling the operator, in the midst of a heap of rubbish,
to put his finger on those things which have in them
the latent capacity to become valuable and curious.
The adept will at once intuitively separate from its
friends the book that either is or will become curious.
There must be something more than mere rarity to
give it this value, although high authorities speak
of the paucity of copies as being everything. David
Clement, the illustrious French bibliographer, who
seems to have anticipated the positive philosophy
by an attempt to make bibliography, as the Ger-
mans have named it, one of the exact sciences, lays
it down with authority, that "a book which it is
difficult to find in the country where it is sought
ought to be called simply rare ; a book which it is
difficult to find in any country may be called very
rare ; a book of which there are only fifty or ' sixty
copies existing, or which appears so seldom as if
there never had been more at any time than that
number of copies, ranks as extremely rare; and
when the whole number of copies does not exceed
ten, this constitutes excessive rarity, or rarity in the

The Preservation of Literature. 225

highest degree." This has been received as a settled
doctrine in bibliography; but it is utter pedantry.
Books may be rare enough in the real or objective
sense of the term, but if they are not so in the
nominal or subjective sense, by being sought after,
their rarity goes for nothing. A volume may be
unique — may stand quite alone in the world —
but whether it is so, or one of a numerous family,
is never known, for no one has ever desired to
possess it, and no one ever will.

But it is a curious phenomenon in the old-book
trade, that rarities do not always remain rare ;
volumes seeming to multiply through some cryp-
togamic process, when we know perfectly that no
additional copies are printed and thrown off. The
fact is, that the rumour of scarcity, and value, and
of a hunt after them, draws them from their hiding-
places. If we may judge from the esteem in which
they were once held, the Elzevirs must have been
great rarities in this country ; but they are now
plentiful enough — the heavy prices in the British
market having no doubt sucked them out of dingy
repositories in Germany and Holland — so that; even
in this department of commerce the law of supply
and demand is not entirely abroga!ted. He who
dashes at all the books called rare, or even very
rare, by Clement and his brethren, will be apt to
suffer the keen disappointment of finding that there
are many who participate with him in the posses-

P

2 26 His functions.

sion of the same treasures. In fact, let a book but
make its appearance in that author's Bibliotheque
Curieuse, Historique, et Critique, ou Catalogue
Raisonn^ des Livres difificiles a trouver ; or in
Graesses's Tr6sor des Livres Rares et Pr^cieux ;
or in the Dictionnaire Bibliographique des Livres
Rares, published by Caileau — or let it be mentioned
as a rarity in Eibert's AUgemeines Bibliographisches
Lexicon, or in Debure, Clement, Osmont, or the
Repertorium Bibliographicum, — such proclamation
is immediate notice to many fortunate possessors
who were no more aware of the value of their
dingy - looking volumes than Monsieur Jourdain
knew himself to be in the habitual daily practice
of talking prose.

So are we brought again back to the conclusion
that the true book-hunter must not be a follower
of any abstract external rules, but must have an
inward sense and literary taste. It is not absolutely
that a book is rare, or that it is run after, that must
commend it to him, but something in the book
itself Hence the relics which he snatches from
ruin will have some innate merits to recommend
them. They will not be of that unhappy kind
which nobody has desired to possess for their own
sake, and nobody ever will. Something there will
be of original genius, or if not that, yet of curious,
odd, out-of-the-way information, or of quaintness of
imagination, or of characteristics pervading some

Librarians. 227

class of men, whether a literary of a ipolemical, —
something, in short, which people desirous of in-
formation will some day or other be anxious to
read, — such are the volumes which it is desirable
to save from annihilation, that they may find their
place at last in some of the great magazines of the
world's literary treasures.

3Ltlitartan3.

T will often be fortunate for these great
institutions if they obtain the services
of the hunter himself, ^long with his
spoils of the chase. The leaders in
the German wars often found it an exceedingly
sound policy to subsidise into their own service
some captain of - free lances, who might have been
a curse to all around him. Your great game-pre-
servers sometimes know the importance of taking
the most notorious poacher in the district into pay
as a keeper. So it is sometimes of the nature of
the book-hunter, if he be of the genial sort, and free
of some of the more, vicious peculiarities of his kind,
to make an invaluable librarian. Such an arrange-
ment will sometimes be found to be like mercy
twice blessed,7— it blesseth him that gives and; him
that takes. '■ The imprisoned spirit probably (finds
freedom at last, and those purchases and accumula-

2 28 His Functions.

tions which, to the private purse, were profuse and
culpable recklessness, may become veritable duty ;
while the wary outlook and the vigilant observation,
which before were only leading a poor victim into
temptation, may come forth as commendable atten-
tion and zealous activity.

Sometimes mistakes have been made in selections
on this principle, and a zeal has been embarked
which has been found to tend neither to profit nor
edification ; for there have been known, at the head
of public libraries, men of the Cerberus kind, who
loved the books so dearly as to be unable to endure
the handling of them by the vulgar herd of readers
and searchers — even by those for whose special aid
ahd service they are employed. They who have
this' morbid terror of the profanation of the treasures
committed to their charge suffer in themselves the
direst torihents— something like those of a cat be-
holding her kittens tossed by a dog— whenever their
favourites are handled '; and the excruciating ex-
tent of their agonies, when any ardent and careless
student dashes right into the^ heart of some editio
princeps- or tall copy, or perhaps lays it open with
its face on the table i while he snatches another
edition that he may collate a passage, is not to be
conceived. ' It! is then the dog worrying the kittens.
Such men will, only give satisfactiori in great private
libraries little disturbed by i their proprietors, or in
monastic- or other corporate institutions, where it is

L ibr avians.. 229

the worthy object of the patrons to keep their col-
lection in fine condition, and, at the same time, to
take order that it shall be of the least possible
service to education or literaturie. Angelo Mai, the
great librarian of the Vatican, who made so many
valuable discoveries himself, had the character of
taking good care that no one else' should make any
within his own strictly preserved hunting grounds.

In the general case, however, a bibliophile at the
head of a public library is genial and communica-
tive, and has a pleasure in helping the investigator
through the labyrinth of its stores. Such men feel
their strength ; and the immense value of the ser-
vice which they may sometimes perform by a brief
hint in the right direction which the inquiry should
take, or by handing down a volume, or recommend-
ing the best directory to all the learning on the
matter in hand, has laid many men of letters under
great obligations to them.

The most eminent type of this class of men was
Magliabecchi, librarian to the Grand-Duke of Tus-
cany, who could direct you to any book; in any part
of the world, with the precision with which the
metropolitan policeman directs you to St Paul's or
Piccadilly. It is of him that the stories are told of
answers to inquiries after bOoks, in these terms :
" There is but one copy of that book in the world.
It is in the Grand Seignior's library at Constanti-
nople, and is the seventh book in the second shelf

230 His Functions.

on the right hand as you go in." His faculties
were, like those of all great men, self-born and self-
trained. So little was i the impoverished soil in
which he passed his infancy congenial to his pur-
suits in after life, that it was not within the parental
intentions to teach him to read, and his earliest
labours were in the shop of a greengrocer.. Had
his genius run on natural science, he might have
fed it here, but it was his felicity and his fortune
to be transferred to the shop of a patronising book^
seller. Here he drank in an education such as
no academic forcing machinery could ever infuse.
He devoured books, and the printed leaves became
as necessary to his existence as the cabbage-leaves
to the caterpillars which at times made their not
welcome appearance in the abjured greengrocery.
Like these verdant reptiles, too, he became assimi-
lated to the food he fed on, insomuch that he was
in a manner hot-pressed, bound, marble-topped, let-
tered, and shelved. He could bear nothing but
books around him, and would allow no space for
aught else ; his furniture, according to repute, being
limited to two chairs, the second: of which was ad-
mitted in order that the two together might serve
as a bed.

Another enthusiast of the same kind was Adrien
Baillet, the author, or, more properly speaking, the
compiler, of the Jugeniens des. : Savans. Some
copies of this book, which has a quantity of valuable

Librarians. 231

matter scattered through it, have Baillet's portrait,
from which his calm scholarly countenance looks
genially forth, with this appropriate motto, "Dans
une douce solitude, a I'abri du mensonge et de la
vanit6, j'adoptai la critique, et j'en fis mon 6tude,
pour decouvrir la v^rit6." Him, struggling with
poverty, aggravated with a thirst for books, did
Lamoignon the elder place at the head of his library,
thus at once pasturing him in clover. When the
patron told his friend, Hermant, of his desire to
find a librarian possessed of certain fabulous qualifi-
cations for the duty, his correspondent said, "I will
bring the very man to you ; " and Baillet, a poor,
frail, attenuated, diseased scholar, was produced.
His kind patron fed him up, so far as a man who
could not tear himself from his books, unless when
nature became entirely exhausted, could be fed up.
The statesman and his librarian were the closest of
friends ; and on the elder Lamoignon's death, the
son, still more distinguished, looked up to Baillet as
a father and instructor.

Men of this stamp are generally endowed with
deep and solid learning. For any one, indeed, to
take the command of a great public library, without
large accomplishments, especially in the languages,
is to put himself in precisely the position where
ignorance, superficiality, and quackery are subjected
to the most potent test, and are certain of detection.
The number of librarians who have united great

232 His Functions.

learning to a love of books, is the best practical
answer to all sneers about the two being incompat-
ible. Nor, while we count among us such names
as Panizzi, Birch, Halkett, Naudet, Laing, Cogswell,
Jones, Pertz, and Todd, is the race of learned libra-
rians likely to decay.

It will be worth while for the patrons of public
libraries, even in appointments to small offices, to
have an eye on bookish men for filling them. One
librarian differs greatly from another, and on this
difference will often depend the entire utility of an
institution, and the question whether it is worth,
keeping it open or closing its door. Of this class
of workman it may be said quite as aptly as of the
poet, that he is born, not made. The usual testimo-
nies to qualification — steadiness, sobriety, civility,
intelligence, &c. — may all be up to the mark that
will constitute a first-rate book-keeper in the mer-
cantile sense of the term, while they are uiTited in a
very dreary and hopeless keeper of books. Such
a person ought to go to his task with something
totally different from the impulses which induce a
man to sort dry goods or make up invoices with emi-
nent success. In short, your librarian would need
to be in some way touched with the malady which
has been the object of these desultory remarks.

Bibliographies. 233

PASSING remark is due to the place
and function in literature of those
books which act the part of gentle-
man-usher towards other books, by
introducing them to the notice of strangers. The
talk about librarians, in fact, brings these naturally
before us by the law of association, since the duties
of the librarian are congenial to this special depart-
ment of the literary world, the work of which has
indeed been chiefly performed by eminent librarians.
The best general name for the class of books
which I refer to, is that of Bibliographies, given to
them by the French. Like most other products of
human ingenuity, they are varied in their objects
and their merits. At the one end of the scale is
the Leipsic Bibliotheca Horatiana, ambitious only
of commemorating the several editions of Horace,
or Kuster's Bibliotheca Historica Brandenburgica,
sacred to the histories of that duchy ; while the
other extremity aims at universality, an object
which has not yet been accomplished, and seems
every day fleeing farther off from those who are
daring enough to pursue it. In 1545, when the
world of literature was rather smaller than it now
is, Conrade Gesner, in his Bibliotheca, made the first

2 34 His Functions.

attempt at a universal bibliography. The incom-
pleteness of the result is confessed in the Epitome
of the Bibliotheca, printed five years afterwards,
which professes only to record nearly all the books
written since the world began, and yet boasts of
adding more than tyvo thousand names of authors
to the number mentioned in the original Biblio-
theca.^

Of what any list of all the books that have ap-
peared in the world might be, one may form some
conception by the effort of Dr Watt, accomplished
nearly fifty years ago. The work is said to have
killed him ; and no one who turns over the densely
printed leaves of his four quartos, can feel surprised
at such a result. It is by no means perfect or com-
plete, even as a guide to books in the compiler's
native tongue, yet stands in honourable contrast
with the failure of several efforts to continue this
portion of it down to later days. The voluminous
France Litteraire of Qu^rard confesses its imper-
fections even to accomplish its limited object, by
professing to devote its special attention to books
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

As to bibliographies of the present century

■' Gesner's is a work in which many curious things may be found,
as, for instance the following, which would have gladdened the heart
of Scott, had it been his fortune to alight on it : " Thomas Leirmant,
vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit Rhythmica qusedam, et ob id
Rhythmicus apud Anglos cognominatus est'. Vixit anno 1286."

Bibliographies. 235

aiming at universality, the AUgemeines Gelehrten
Lexicon of Jocher- — ^when accompanied by Adeluhg's
supplement, which is its better-half — for scholarship
and completeness casts into shade anything pro-
duced either in France or here. It is a guide
which few people consult without passing a com-
pliment either internally or aloud on the satisfac-
tory result. That it contains an account of every,
or nearly every, book is at once contradicted by
its bulk, yet it is often remarked that no one
appeals to it in vain — a specialty which seems
to have arisen from the peculiar capacity of its
editors to dive, as it were, into the hearts of those
likely to seek their aid.

Naturally, the most satisfactory of bibliographies
are those limited to books of a special class. These
are frequent in law and divinity, but are most
numerous in history. Hence have we such valued
guides as Lelong, Dupin, Dufresnoy, and our own
dynasty of historical bibliographers, which, includ-
ing Leland, Bale, Pitts, and Tanner, reached its
climax in Bishop Nicholson, whose introduction
to the sources of British history, hitherto so valu-
able, will be superseded for most practical purposes
on the completion of Mr Duffus Hardy's Descripr
tive Catalogue of Materials relating to the History
of Great Britain and Ireland. Science, though it
can boast of the great compilations of Haller, and
of other sources of reference to its literature, takes

236 His Functions.

less aid from such guides than: other departments
of intellectual labour, for the obvious reason that,
except to the few who are pursuing its history
through its dawn and progress, the latest books on
any department generally supersede their predeces-
sors. They are, in fact, themselves the guides which
show the scientific inquirer his work, not lying
like that of the historian and divine in old books, but
in existing things and practical experiments. Of
books intended to show what is to be found in
others, an extremely curious history attaches to
one, the Bibliotheca of Photius. It is known of
course to all divines, but not necessarily, perhaps,
to every other person, that this turbulent and am-
bitious patriarch, during what he calls his embassy
to Syria, occupied himself in taking down notes of
the contents of theological treatises by his prede-
cessors and contemporaries, with his judgments on
their merits. , Being a man of controversial pro-
pensities, he selected for criticism the works of
the authors with ^vhom he was at war. Ranking
himself among the orthodox, he thus collected
notes of the works of heterodox writers, and, among
these, of several eminent Arians ; and the rather
startling result of his labours is, that a considerable
quantity of Arian literature has thus been pre-
served, which, but for the exertions of the man
who intended to exterminate it by his censure,
would have been entirely lost to the world.

Bibliographies. 237

There are among bibliographers many highly
meritorious leaders through the mysteries of occult
literature — as, for instance, those who, like Placcius,
Mylius, Barbi^re, and Melzi, have devoted them-
selves to the discovery and publication of the
authorship of anonymous works. Their function
is, on the whole, a rather cruel one, and suggests
that those who betake themselves to it are men of
austere character. Sometimes, to be sure, it falls to
their lot to place the laurel wreath of fame on the
deserving brow, but very seldom before the grave
has closed over it. The resuscitation of books
which have passed unnoticed because they were
beyond their age, or failed to touch its sympathies,
has been the class of instances in which honour has
been thus conferred ; and it has seldom fallen to
the lot of the living, for the reason that it is the
nature of the human being not very resolutely to
conceal from an inquiring public those of his actions
which receive the* approval of" 'his Own conscience
and taste. In dealing with the living, and often
the recently departed, it is the function of this class
of investigators to expose the weaknesses and in-
consistencies of the wise and great. It is they who
have told the world about the youthful Jacobitism
of the eminent pillar of the Constitution ; of the
early Radicalism of the distinguished Conservative;
of the more than questionable escapades of the
popular, yet sedate divine, whose works are the

238 His Functions.

supreme model of decorous piety. In this wise,
indeed, the function of the bibliographer of the
anonymous much resembles the detective's. Like
that functionary, he must not let feelings of deli-
cacy or humanity interfere with the relentless exe-
cution of his duty, for of those who have achieved
eminence as public teachers, all that they have ever
told the world is the world's property. Whatever
mercy may be shown to the history of their private
life, cannot be claimed for the sayings which they
-have made or tried to make public. If they have
at other times uttered opinions different from those
which have achieved for them fame and eminence,
those early utterances are an effective test of the
value and sincerity of the later, and were it for this
object only, the world is entitled to look at them.
This is one of the penalties which can only be
escaped by turning aside from the path to emin-
ence;l

Passing from this cl^ss of interesting though
rather unamiable elucidations, I come to another
class of bibliographies, of which it is difficult to
speaik with patience— those which either profess to

1 It will be agreeable news to the severely disposed, to know that a
wholesale exposure of those British authors who attempt to hide their
deeds in darkness is now in progress, the work haying been under-
taken, as police reports say, by "a thoro\ighly efficient officer of
indomitable activity."

Bibliographies. 2 39

tell you how to find the best books to consult on
every department of learning, or undertake to point
out to you the books which you should select for
your library, or for your miscellaneous reading. As
to those which profess to be universal mentors, at
hand to help you with the best tools for your work,
in whichever department of intellectual labour it
may happen to be, they break down at once. Who-
ever has set himself to any special line of investiga-
tion, cannot open one of those books without dis-
covering its utter worthlessness and incapacity to
aid him in his own specialty As to the other
class of bibliographers, who profess to act the
guide, philosopher, and friend to the collector and
the reader, I cannot imagine anything more offen-
sively audacious than the function they assume.
It is an attempt of the pedagogue to assert a juris-
diction over grown intellects, and hence such books
naturally develop in flagrant exaggeration the prag-
matical priggism which is the pedagogue's charac-
teristic defect. I would except from this condemna-
tion a few bibliographers, who, instead of sitting in
the schoolmaster's chair and dictating to you what
it is proper that you should read, rather give you
a sly hint that they are going a-vagabondising
through the byways of literature, and will take
you with them if you like. Among these I would
chiefly be inclined to affect the company of Peignot,

240 His Functions.

whose wild and wayward course of reading provides
for you something like to a ramble over the moun-
tains with an Alpine hunter, the only kind of guide
to whom the thorough pedestrian wanderer should
give up his freedom. One of Peignot's books,
called Predicatoriana, ou Revelations Singuli^res
et Amusantes sur les Pr^dicateurs, brings one into
scenes apt to shock a mind not tolerably hardened
by eclectic reading. It is an anonymous publica-
tion, but has been traced home by the literary
detectives. It may be characterised as a collection
of the Buffooneries of Sermons. A little book en-
livened by something like the same spirit, called
The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, is known
among ourselves ; and there is an answer to it
assailing the Episcopal Church of Scotland, in a
tone which decidedly improves on the lesson of
sarcasm and malignity taught by the other side.
Both writers : are dishonest in the statements they
make and the passages they quote from their ad-
versaries, and both are grotesque and profane.
Peignot, not being influenced by polemical ran-
cour, is no doubt honest in his quotations, and
tells you that the persons who pi;eached the pas-
sages quoted by him uttered them in all religious
sincerity. Yet wide as the Christian world stretches
beyond our corner of it, by so far does the French-
man's book in grotesqueness and profanity out-

Bibliographies. 241

shadow the attempts of the Scottish polemical com-
batants.

Of that highly patrician class of bibliographies
which offer their services exclusively to the collec-
tors of rare, curious, and costly books, there are so
many notices dotted over this volume, that I shall
only stop here to mark the recentness of their
appearance in literature. To judge from the title-.
page, one might trace them as far back as 1676, in
John Hallervord's Bibliotheca Curiosa, in which the
editor professes to indicate many authors which are
very rare and known to few ; but this book would
give no satisfaction to pure rarity seekers. Haller-
vord takes curious in its old sense, which corre-
sponds in some measure with the present use of the
word interesting; and the specialty of the books
being known to few, seems to refer to their pro-
fundity and the rarity of learning sufficient to sound
their depths. Nor does the list published a few
years later by the London bookseller Hartley,
though it professes to signalise very rare books,
show that nice sense which discriminates game of
a high order from the vulgar and useful.^ I sus-
pect that before we reach the dawn of this class of

' Catalogus Universalis Librorum in omni facultate linguaque in-
signium et rarissimorum, &c. Londini, apud Joannem Hartley,
Bibliopolam, exadversum Hospitio Grayensi, in vico vulgo Holborn
dicto. MDCXCIX.

242 His Functions,

literature proper, we must descend at oBtte to the
year 1750, distinguished by the simultaneous ap-
pearance of Clement's Bibliothequ.e Curieuse, and
Freytag's Analecta de Libris Rarioribus.i

^ Of course the' Bibliographers prey relentlessly on each other, and
bibliographical notices of Bibliographies, abound. , 1,6 Brjm sets aside
a department for them, but the most handy reference to them that
has come my way ' is a chronological list in the Dictionnaire Biblio-
graphique, ou Nouyeau Manuel ,du,Libraire,_by M. p***** — identi-
fied by his brother detectives as M. fsaume.

PART III.— HIS CLUB.

ffilufis m ffimeral.

|N author of the last generation, pro-
fessing to deal with any branch of
human affairs, if he were ambitious
of being considered philosophical,
required to go at once to the be-
ginning of all things; where, finding man alone in
the world, he would describe how the biped set
about his own special business, for the supply of his
own wants and desires ; and then finding that the
human being was, by his instincts, not a solitary but
a social animal, the ambitious author would proceed
in well-balanced sentences to describe how men
aggregated themselves into hamlets, villages, towns,
cities, counties, parishes, corporations, select vestries,
and so on. I find that, without the merit of enter-
taining any philosophical views, I have followed,
unconsciously, the same routine. Having discussed

244 His Club.

the book-hunter as he individually pursues his ob-
ject, I now propose to look in upon him at his club,
and say something about its peculiarities, as the
shape in which he takes up the pursuit collectively
with others who happen to be like-minded to him-
self.

Those who are so very old as to remember the
Episcopal Church of Scotland in that brief period
of stagnant depression when the repeal of the penal
laws had removed from her the lustre of martyrdom,
and she had not yet attained the more secular lustre
which the zeal of her wealthy votaries has since
conferred on h^, will be familiar with the name of
Bishop Robert Jolly. To the ordinary reader, how-
ever, it may be necessary to introduce him more
specifically. He was a man of singular purity, de-
votedness, and learning. If he had no opportunity
of attesting the sincerity of his faith by undergoing
stripes and bondage for the Church of his adoption,
he developed in its fulness that unobtrusive self-
devotion, not inferior to martyrdom, which dedicates
to obscure duties the talent and energy that, in the
hands of the selfish and ambitious, would be the
sure apparatus of wealth and station. He had no
doubt risen to an office of dignity in his own Church
— he was a bishop. But to understand the position
of a Scottish bishop in those days, one must figure
Parson Adams, no richer than Fielding has de-
scribed him, yet encumbered by a title ever asso-

Clubs in General. 245

dated with wealth and dignity, and only calculated,
when allied with so much poverty and social humil-
ity, to deepen the incongruity of his lot, and throw
him more than ever on the mercy of the scorner.
The office was indeed conspicuous, not by its digni-
ties or emoluments, but by the extensive opportu-
nities it afforded for self-devotion. One may have
noticed his successor of later times giving lustre to
newspaper paragraphs as "The Lord Bishop of
Moray and Ross." It did not fall to the lot of him
of whom I write to render his title so flagrantly
incongruous. A lordship was not necessary, but it
was the principle of his Church to require a bishop,
and in him she got a bishop. In reality, however,
he was the parish clergyman of the small and poor
remnant of the Episcopal persuasion who inhabited
the odoriferous fishing-town of Fraserburgh. There
he lived a long life of such simplicity and abstinence
as the poverty of the poorest of his flock scarcely
drove them to. He had one failing to link his life
with this nether world — he was a book-hunter. How
with his poor income, much of which went to feed
the necessities of those still poorer, he should have
accomplished anything in a pursuit generally con-
sidered expensive, is among other unexplained mys-
teries. But somehow he managed to scrape together
a curious and interesting collection, so that his name
became associated with rare books, as well as with
rare Christian virtues.

246 His Club.

When it was proposed to establish an institution
for reprinting the works of the fathers of the Epis-
copal Church in Scotland, it was naturally deemed
that no more worthy or characteristic name could
be attached to it than that of the venerable prelate
who, by his learning and virtues, had so long
adorned the Episcopal chair of Moray and Ross,
and who had shown a special interest in the de-
partment of literature to which the institution was
to be devoted. Hence it came to pass that, through
a perfectly natural process, the association for the
purpose of reprinting the works of certain old divines
was to be ushered into the world by the style and
title of The Jolly Club.

There happened to be amongst those concerned,
however, certain persons so corrupted with the
wisdom of this world, as to apprehend that the
miscellaneous public might fail to trace this desig-
nation to its true origin, and might indeed totally
mistake the nature and object of the institution,
attributing to it aims neither consistent with the
ascetic life of the departed prelate, nor with the
pious and intellectual objects of its founders. The
counsels of these worldly-minded persons prevailed.
The Jolly Club was never instituted, — at least, as
an association for the reprinting of old books of
divinity, though I am not prepared to say that
institutions more than one so designed- may not
exist for other purposes. The object, however, was

Club's if^ General. 247

not entirely abandoned. A body of gentlemen
united themselves together under the name of an-
other Scottish prelate, whose fate had been more
distinguished, if not more fortunate ; and the Spot-
tiswoode Society was established. Here, it will be
observed, there was a passing to the opposite ex-
treme; and: so intense, seems to have been the
anxiety to escape from all excuse, for indecorous
jokes or taint of joviality, that the word Club, wisely
adopted by other bodies of the same kind, was
abandoned, and this one called itself a Society. To
that abandonment of the medio tutissimus has been
attributed its early death by those who contemn
the taste of those other communities, essentially
Book Clubs, which have taken to the devious course
of calling themselves " Societies." ,

In fact, all our societies, from the broad-brimmed
Society of Friends downwards, have something in
them of a homespun,;humdrum, plain, flat — not un-
profitable, perhaps, but unattractive' character. They
may be good and useful, but they have no dignity
or splendour,, and are quite destitute of the strange
meteoric power and grandeur which have accom-
panied the career of Clubs. Societies there are,
indeed, which identify themselves through their very
nomenclature with, misfortune and misery, seeming
proudly to proclaim; thenlselves, victims to all the
saddest ills that flesh is heir tO: — as, for instance,
Destitute Sick Societies, Indigent Blind Societies,

248 His Club.

Deaf and Dumb Societies, Burial Societies, and the
like. The nomenclature of some of these benevo-
lent institutions seems likely to test the etymological
skill of the next generation of learned men. Per-
haps some ethnological philosopher will devote
himself to the special investigation and develop-
ment of the phenomenon ; and if such things are
done then in the way in which they are now, the.
result will appear in something like the following
shape : —

" Man, as we pursue his destiny from century to
century, is still found inevitably to resolve himself
into a connected and antithetic series of consecutive
cycles. The eighteenth century having been an age
of individuative, the nineteenth necessarily became
an age of associative or coinonomic development.
He, the man — ^to himself the ego, and to others the
mere homo — ceased to revolve around the centre of
gravity of his own personality, and, following the
instincts of his adhesive nature, resolved himself into
associative community. In this necessary develop-
ment of their nature all partook, from the congresses
of mighty monarchs down to those humbler but not
less majestic types of the predominant influence,
which, in the expressive language of that age, were
recognised as twopenny goes: . It is known only to
those whose researches have led them through the
intricacies of that phase of human progress, how
multifarious and varied were the forms in which

Clubs in General. 249

the inner spirit, objectively at work in mankind, had
its external subjective development. Not only did
associativeness shake the monarch on his throne,
and prevail over the counsels of the assembled mag-
nates of the realm, but it was the form in which
each shape and quality of humanity, down even tb
penury and disease, endeavoured to express its in-
stincts ; and so the blind and the lame, the deaf
and dumb, the sick and poor, made common stock
of their privations, and endeavoured by the force of
union to convert weakness into strength," &c.

When the history of clubs is fully written, let us
hope that it will be in another fashion. If it suffi-
ciently abound in details, such a history would be
full of marvels, from the vast influences which it
would describe as arising from time to time by
silent obscure growth out of nothing, as it were.
Just look at what clubs have been, and have done ;
a mere enumeration is enough to recall the impres-
sion. Not to dwell on the institutions which have
made Pall Mall and its neighbourhood a conglo-
merate of palaces, or on such lighter affairs as " the
Four-in-Hand," which the railways have left behind,
or the " Alpine," whose members they carry to the
field of their enjoyment : there was the Mermaid,
counting among its members Shakespeare, Raleigh,
Beaumont, Fletcher, and Jonson ; then came the
King's Head ; the October ; the Kit-Cat ; the Beef-
Steak ; the Terrible Calves Head ; Johnson's club.

250 His Club.

where he had Bozzy, Goldie, Burke, and Reynolds ;
the Poker, where Hume, Carlyle, Ferguson^ and
Adam Smith took their claret

In these, with all their varied objects — literary,
political, or convivial — the one leading peculiarity
was the powerful influence they exercised on the
condition of their times. A certain dub there was
with a simple unassuming name, — differing, by the
way, only in three letters from that which would
have . commemorated the virtues of Bishop Jolly.
The club in question, though nothing in the eye
of the country but ah easy knot of gentlemen who
assembled for their amusement, cast defiance at a
sovereign prince, and shook the throne and institu-
tions of the. greatest of modern states. But if we
want to see the club culnainating to its highest pitch
of ppwer, we must go across the water and saturate
ourselves with the horrors of the Jacobin clubs,
the Breton, and the Feuillans. The scenes we will
there find stand forth in eternal protest against
Johnson's genial; definition in his Dictionary, where
he calls a club " an assembly of good fellows,
meieting under certain conditions."

Structure: of the Book Clubs. 251

W^z StrtictKtE of tlie Book CCluis.

HERE has been an addition, by no
means contemptible, to the influence
exercised by' these institutions on the
course of events, in the Book Clubs, or
Printing Clubs as they are otherwise termed, of the
present day. They have within a few years added
a department to literature. The collector who has
fbeen a meniber of several may count their fruit by
the thousand, all ranging- in symrtietrical and portly
volumes. Without interfering either with the author
who seeks in his copyrights the reward of his genius
and labour, or with the publisher who calculates
on a return for his capital, skill, and industry, the
book clubs have ministered to literary wants, which
.these legitimate sources of supply have been unable
to meet.

I hope ho one is capable of reading, so far through
thisbook who is so grossly ignorant as not to know
that the Book Clubs are a set, of associations , for
the purpose of printing and. distributing among
their members certain books, calculated; to gratify
the peculiar taste which has brought them together
and united them into, a club. An opportunity may
perhaps be presently taken for indulging in some
characteristic notices of the several clubs, their

252 His Club.

members, and their acts and monuments : in the
mean time let me say a word on the utilitarian
efficiency of this arrangement — on the blank in
the order of terrestrial things which the Book Club
was required to fill, and the manner in which it has
accomplished its function.

There is a class of books of which the production
has in this country always been uphill work ; — large
solid books, more fitted for authors and students
than for those termed the reading public at large
— books which may hence, in some measure, be
termed the raw materials of literature, rather than
literature itself They are eminently valuable ; but,
since it is to the intellectual manufacturer who .is
to produce an article of saleable literature that they
are valuable, rather than to the general consumer,
they do not secure an extensive sale. Of this kind
of literature the staple materials are old state papers
and letters — old chronicles — specimens of poetic,
dramatic, and other literature, more valuable as
vestiges of the style and customs of their age
than for their absolute worth as works of genius —
massive volumes of old divinity — disquisitions on
obsolete science, and the like.

It is curious, by the way, that costly books of
this sort seem to succeed better with the French
than with us, though we do not generally give that
people credit for excelling us in the outlay of
money. Perhaps it is because they enjoy the

Structure of the Book Clubs. 253

British market as well as their own that they are
enabled to excel us ; but they certainly do so in
the publication, through private enterprise, of great
costly works, having a sort of national character.
The efforts to rival them in this country have been
considerable and meritorious, but in many instances
signally unfortunate. Take, for instance, the noble
edition of HoUingshed and the other chroniclers,
published in quarto volumes by the London trade ;
the Parliamentary History, in thirty-six volumes,
each containing about as much reading as Gibbon's
Decline and Fall ; the State Trials ; Sadler's and
Thurlow's State Papers ; the Harleian Miscellany,
and several other ponderous publications of the
same kind. AH" of them are to be had cheap, some
at just a percentage above the price of waste paper.
When an attempt was made to publish in the Eng-
lish language a really thorough Biographical Dic-
tionary, an improvement on the French Biographic
Universelle, it stuck in letter A, after the comple-
tion of seven dense octavo volumes — an abortive
fragment bearing melancholy testimony to what
such a work ought to be. Publications of this
kind have, in several instances^ caused great losses
to some, while they have brought satisfaction to
no one concerned in them. A publisher has just
the same distaste as any other ordinary member of
the human family to the loss of five or ten thousand
pounds in hard cash. Then, as touching the pur-

2 54 H^^ Club.

chasers, — no doubt the throwing of a "remnant"
on the market may sometimes bring the book into
the possession of one who can put it to good use,
and would have been unable to purchase it at the
original price. But the rich deserve some considera-
tion as well as the poor. It will be hard to find the
man so liberal and benevoleint that he will joyfully
see his neighbour obtain for thirty shillings the
precise article for which he has himself paid thirty
pounds; nor does there exist the descendant of
Adam who, whatever he may say or pretend, will
take such an ■ antithesis with perfect equanimity.
Even the fortunate purchasers of portions of "the
remnant," or " the broken book," as another pleasant
technicality of the trade has it, are not always
absolutely happy in their lot. They have been
tempted by sheer cheapness to admit some bulky
and unwieldy articles into their abodes, and they
look askance at the commodity as being rather a
sacrifice to mammon than a monument of good
taste.

It has been the object of the machinery here
referred to, to limit the impressions of such works
to those who want and can pay for them — an ex-
tremely simple object, as all great ones are. There
is, however, a minute nicety in the adjustment of
the machinery, which was not obvious until it came
forth in practice — a nicety without which the whole
system falls to pieces. It was to accomplish this

Structure of the Book Clubs. 255

nicety that the principle of the club was found to
be so well adapted. A club is essentially a body to
which more people want admission than can gain
it ; if it do not manage to preserve this character-
istic, it falls to pieces, for want of pressure from
without, like a cask divested of its hoops. To
make the books retain their value, and be an object
of desire, it was necessary that the impressions
should be slightly within the natural circulation —
that there should be rather a larger number de-
sirous of obtaining each volume than the number
that could be supplied with it. The club effected
this by its own natural a:ction. So lohg as there
were candidates for vacancies and the ballot-box
went round, so long were the books printed in
demand and valuable to their possessors. If there
were no or 120 people willing to possess and pay
for a certain class of books, the secret of keeping
up the pressure from without and the value of the
books, was to limit the number of members and
participators to lOO. There is nothings noble or
disinterested in this. The arrangement has no pre-
tension to either of these qualities ; nor, when we
come to the great forces which influence the supply
and demand of human wants, whether in the higher
or the humbler departments, will we find these
qualities in force, or indeed any other motive than
common Selfishness. It is a sufficient vindication
of the arrangement that it produced its effect. If

256 His Club.

there were ten or twenty disappointed candidates,
the hundred were possessed of the treasures which
none could have obtained but for the restrictive
arrangements. Scott used to say that the Banna-
tyne Club was the only successful joint-stock com-
pany he ever invested in — and the remark is the
key-note of the motives which kept alive the system
that has done so much good to literature.

To understand the nature and services of these
valuable institutions, it is necessary to keep in view
the limits within which alone they can be legiti-
mately worked. They will not serve for the pro-
pagation of standard literature — of the books of
established reputation, which are always selling.
These are merchandise, and must follow the law of
trade like other commodities, whether they exist in
the form of copyright monopolies, or are open to all
speculators. No kind of co-operation will bring the
volumes into existence so cheaply as the outlay of
trade capital, which is expected to replace itself
with a moderate profit after a quick sale. The
perfection of this process is seen in the production
and .sale of that book which is ever the surest of
a market — the Bible ; and when a printer requires
the certain and instantaneous return of his outlay,
that is the shape in which he is most secure of ob-
taining it.

On the other hand, the clubs will not avail for
ushering into the world the books of fresh ambitious

Structure of the Book Clubs. 257

authors. That paradise of the geniuses, in which
their progeny are to be launched full sail, where
they are to encounter no risks, and draw all the
profits without discount or percentage, as yet exists
only in the imagination. It would not work very
satisfactorily to have a committee decreeing the
issues, and the remuneration to be paid to each
aspirant — ten thousand copies of Poppleton's Epic,
and a cheque for a thousand pounds handed over
out of the common stock, to begin with — half the
issue, and half the remuneration for the Lyrics of
Astyagus, as a less robust and manful production,
but still a pleasant, murmuring, meandering, earnest
little dream-book, fresh with the solemn purpose of
solitude and silence. No, it must be confessed our
authors and men of letters would make sad work
of it, if they had the bestowal of the honours and
pecuniary rewards of literature in their hands,
whether these were administered by an intellectual
hierarchy or by a collective democracy. Hence the
clubs have wisely confined their operations to books
which are not the works of their members ; and to
keep clear of all risk of literary rivalries, they have
been almost exclusively devoted to the promulga-
tion of the works of authors long since dead,
whether by printing from original manuscripts or
from rare printed volumes.

It has been pleaded that this machinery might
have been rendered influential for the encourage-

R

2 58 His Club.

ment of living authorship. It has been, for instance,
observed, with some plausibility, that he who has
the divine fervour of the author in him, will sacrifice
all he has to sacrifice — time, toil, and health — so
that he can but secure a hearing by the world ; and
institutions of the nature of the book clubs might
afford him this at all events, leaving him to find his
way to wealth and honours, if the sources of these
are in him. No doubt the history of book-publish-
ing shows how small are the immediate induce-
ments and the well-founded hopes that will set
authors in motion, and, indeed, a very large per-
centage of valueless literature proves that the bar-
riers between the author and the world are not
very formidable, or become somehow easily remov-
able. This, in fact, furnishes the answer to the
pleading here alluded to ; and it may further be
safely said, where the book demanding an introduc-
tion professes to be a work of genius, addressing
itself to all mankind, that if it really be what it
professes, the market will get it. No production
of the kind is liable to be lost to the world.

Here it is plaintively argued by Philemon, that
the rewards of genius are very unequally distributed.
Who can deny it ? Nothirig is distributed with per-
fect balance like chemical equivalents in this world,
at least so far as mortal faculties are capable of
estimating the elements of happiness and unhappi-
ness in the lot of our fellow-men ; nor. can one

Structure of the Book Clubs. 259

imagine that a world, all balanced and squared off
to perfection, would be a very tolerable place to live
in. Genius nriust take its chance, like all other
qualities, and, on the whole, in a civilised country-
it gets on pretty well. Is it not something in itself
to possess genius? and is it seemly, or a good
example to the uninspired world, that its owner
should deem it rather a misfortune than a blessing
because he is not also surrounded by plush and
shoulder-knots? If all geniuses had a prerogative
right to rank and wealth, and all the pomps and
vanities of this wicked world, could we be sure
that none but genuine geniuses would claim them,
and that there would be no margin for disputation
with " solemn shams " ? Milton's fifteen pounds are
often referred to by him who finds how hard it is
to climb, &c. ; but we have no " return," as the
blue-books call it, of all the good opportunities
afforded to intellects ambitious of arising as meteors
but only showing themselves as farthing rush-lights.
On the other hand,, no doubt, the wide fame and
the rich rewards of the popular author are not in
every instance an exact measure of his superiority
to the disappointed aspirant. His thousand pounds
do not furnish incontrovertible evidence that he is
a hundred times superior to the drudge who goes
over as much work for ten pounds, and there may
possibly be some one making nothing who is su-
perior to both.

26o His Club.

Such aberrations are incident to all human
affairs ; but in those of literature, as in many others,
they are exceptional. Here, as in other spheres of
exertion, merit will in the general case get its own
in some shape. Indeed, there is a very remarkable
economic phenomenon, never, as it occurs to me,
fully examined, which renders the superfluous suc-
cess of the popular author a sort of insurance fund
for enabling the obscure adventurer to enter the
arena of authorship, and show what he is worth.
Political economy has taught us that those old
bugbears of the statute law called forestallers and
regraters are eminent benefactors, in as far as their
mercenary instincts enable them to see scarcity from
afar, and induce them to "hold on" precisely so long
as it lasts but no longer, since, if they have stock
remaining on hand when abundance returns, they
will be losers. Thus, through the regular course
of trade, the surplus of the period of abundance is
distributed over the period of scarcity with a pre-
cision which the genius of a Joseph or a Turgot
could not achieve.

The phenomenon in the publishing world to which
I have alluded has sonie resemblance to this, and
comes to pass in manner following. The confirmed
popular author whose books are sure to sell is an
object of competition among publishers. If he is
absolutely mercenary, he may stand forth in the
public market and commit his works to that one

Structure of the Book Clubs. 261

who will take them on the best terms for the author
and the worst for himself, like the contractor who
gives in the lowest estimate in answer to an adver-
tisement from a public department. Neither under-
taking holds out such chances of gain as inde-
pendent speculation may open, and thus there is an
inducement to the enterprising publisher to risk his
capital on the doubtful progeny of some author
unknown to fame, in the hope that it may turn out
" a hit." Of the number of books deserving a better
fate, as also of the still greater number deserving
none better than the fate they have got, which have
thus been published at a dead loss to the publisher,
the annals of bookselling could afford a moving
history.

When an author has sold his copyright for a
comparative trifle, and the book turns out a great
success, it is of course matter of regret that he can-
not have the cake he has eaten. This is one side of
the balance-sheet, and on the other stands the debit
account in the author who, through a work which
proved a dead loss to its publisher, has made a re-
putation which lias rendered his subsequent books
successful, and made himself fashionable and rich.
There have been instances where publishers who
have bought for little the copyright of a successful
book have allowed the author to participate in their
gains ; and I am inclined to believe that these in-
stances are fully as numerous as those in which an

262 His Club.

author, owing his reputation and success to a book
which did not pay its expenses, has made up the
losses of his first pubUsher.

If we go out of the hard market and look at the
tendency of sympathies, they are all in the author's
favour. Publishers, in fact, have, though it is not
generally believed, a leaning towards good literature,
and a tendency rather to over than to under esti-
mate the reception it may meet with from the
world. In considering whether they will take the
risk of a new publication, they have no criterion
to value it by except its literary merit, for they
cannot obtain the votes of the public until they are
committed ; and, indeed, there have been a good
many instances where a publisher, having a faith in
some individual author and his star, has pushed
and fought a way for him with dogged and detei'-
mined perseverance, sometimes with a success of
which, were all known, he has more of the real
merit than the author, who seems to have naturally,
without any external aid, taken his position among
the eminent and fortunate.

There are, at , the same time, special disquisitions
on matters of science or learning intended for pecu-
liar and limited audiences, which find their way to
publicity without the aid of the publisher. For
these there is an opening in certain institutions
far older than, the book clubs, and possessed of
a far higher social and intellectual position, since

Structure of the Book Clubs. 263

•

they have the means of conferring titles of dignity
on those they adopt into their circle — titles which
are worn nqt by trinkets dangling at the button-
hole, but by certain cabalistic letters strung to the
name in the directory of the town where the owner
lives, or in the numberless biographical dictionaries
which are to immortalise the present generation.
So the author of an essay, especially in scholar-
ship or science, will, if it be worth anything, find a
place for it in the Transactions of one or other of
the learned societies. It will probably keep com-
pany with, if indeed it be not itself one of, a series
of papers which appear in the quarto volumes of
the learned corporation's Transactions,, merely be-
cause they cannot get into the octavo pages of the
higher class of periodicals ; but there they are,
printed in the face of the world, whose inhabitants
at large may worship them if they so please, and
their authors cannot complain that they are sup-
pressed. Whether the authors of these papers may
have been ambitious of their appearance in a wider
sphere, or are content with their appearance in
" The Transactions," it suffices for the present pur-
pose to explain how these volumes are a more
suitable receptacle than those printed by the book
clubs for essays or disquisitions by men following
up their own specialties in literature or science ;
and if it be the case that some of the essays which
appear in the Transactions of learned bodies jvpuld

264 His Club,

have gladly entered society under the auspices of
some eminent periodical, yet it is proper at the
same time to admit that many of the most valuable
of these papers, concerning discoveries or inventions
which adepts alone can appreciate, could only be
satisfactorily published as they have been. And so
we find our way back to the proposition, that the
book clubs have been judiciously restricted to the
promulgation of the works of dead authors.

This has not necessarily excluded the literary
contributions of living men, in the shape of editing
and commenting ; and it is really difficult to esti-
mate the quantity of valuable matter which is thus
deposited in obscure but still accessible places. , A
deal of useful work, too, has been done in the way
of translation ; and where the book to be dealt with
is an Icelandic saga, a chronicle in Saxon, in Irish
Celtic, or even in old Norman, one may confess to
the weakness of letting the original remain, in some
instances, unexamined, and drawing one's informa-
tion with confiding gratitude from the translation
furnished by the learned editor.

Let me ofTer one instance of the important ser-
vice that may be done by affording a vehicle for
translations. The late Dr Francis Adams, a village
surgeon by profession, was at the same time, from
taste and pursuit, a profound Greek scholar. He
was accustomed to read tjie old authors on medicine
and surgery — a custom too little respected by his

The Roxburghe Club. 265

profession, of whom it is the characteristic defect to
respect too absolutely the standard of the day. As
a physician, who is an ornament to his profession
and a great scholar, once observed to me, the writ-
ings of the old physicians, even if we reject them
from science, may be perused with profit to the
practitioner as a record of the diagnosis of cases
stated by men of acuteness, experience, and accu-
racy of observation. Adams had translated from
the Greek the works of Paul of .^gina, the father
of obstetric surgery, and printed the first volume.
It was totally unnoticed, for in fact there were no
means by which the village surgeon could get it
brought under the notice of the scattered members
of his profession who desired to possess such a book.
The remainder of his labours would have been lost
to the world had it not been taken off his hands by
the Sydenham Club, established for the purpose of
reprinting the works of the ancient physicians.

REAT institutions and small institutions
have each individually had a begin-
ning, though it cannot always be dis-
covered, distance often obscuring it

before it has been thought worth looking after.

There is an ingenious theory abroad, to the effect

266 His Club.

that every physical impulse, be it but a wave of a
human hand, and that every intellectual impulse,
whether it pass through the mind of a Newton
or a brickmaker, goes, with whatever strength it
may possess, into a common store of dynamic influ-
ences, and tells with some operative power, however
imperceptible and infinitesimal, upon all subsequent
events, great or small, so that everything tells on
everything, and there is no one specific cause,
primary or secondary, that can be assigned to any
particular event. It may be so objectively, as the
transcendentalists say, but to common apprehen-
sions there are specific facts which are to them
emphatic as beginnings, such as the day when any
man destined for leadership in great political events
was born, or that whereon the Cape of Good Hope
was doubled, or America was discovered.

The beginning of the book clubs is marked by
a like, distinctness, both in date and circunistance.
The institution did not spring in full maturity and
equipment, like Pallas from the brain of Jove ; it
was started by a casual impulse, and remained long
insignificant ; but its origin and early progress are
as distinctly and specifically its own, as the birth
and infancy of any hero or statesman are his. It is
to the garrulity of Dibdin writing before there was
any prospect that this class of institutions would
reach their subsequent importance and usefulness,
that we owe many minute items of detail about the

The Roxburghe Club. 267

cradle of the new system. We first slip in upon a
small dinner-party, on the 4th of June in the year
18 1 3, at the table of " Hortensius." The day was
one naturally devoted to hospitality, being the birth-
day of the reigning monarch, George III. ; but this
the historian passes unnoticed, the object of all-
absorbing interest being the great conflict of the
Roxburghe book-sale, then raging through its forty-
and-one days. Of Hortensius it is needless to know
more than that he was a distinguished lawyer, and
had a fine library, which having described, Dibdin
passes on thus to matters of more immediate im-
portance : " Nor is the hospitality of the owner of
these treasures of a less quality and calibre than his
taste ; for Hortensius regaleth liberally — and as the
' night and day champagnes ' (so he is pleased hu-
morously to call them) sparkle upon his Gottingen-
manufactured table-cloth, 'the master of the revels,'
or (to borrow the phraseology of Pynson) of the
'feste royalle,' discourseth lustily and loudly upon
the charms — not of a full-curled or full-bottomed
'King's Bench' periwig— but of a full -margined
Bartholomseus or Barclay like his own." ^

After some forty pages of this sort of matter, we
get another little peep at this momentous dinner-
party. " On the clearance of the Gottingen-manu-
factured table-cloth, the Roxburghe battle formed

1 Bibliographical Decameron, vol. iii. p. 28.

268 His Club.

the subject of discussion, when I proposed that we
should not only be all present, if possible, on the
day of the sale of the Boccaccio, but that we should
meet at some ' fair tavern ' to commemorate the sale
thereof" They met accordingly on the 17th of
June, some eighteen in number, "at the St Albans
Tavern, St Albans Street, now Waterloo Place."
Surely the place was symbolical, since on the i8th
of June, two years afterwards, the battle of Waterloo
was fought ; and as the importance attributed to
the contest at Roxburghe House on the 17th pro-
cured for it afterwards the name of the Waterloo of
book-battles, it came to pass that there were two
Waterloo commemorations treading closely one on
the other's heels.

The pecuniary stake at issue, and the consequent
excitement when the Valdarfer Boccaccio was
knocked off, so far exceeded all anticipation, that at
the festive board a motion was made and carried by
acclamation, for meeting on the same day and in
the same manner annually. And so the Roxburghe
Club, the parent of all the book clubs, came into
existence.

It must be admitted that its origin bears a curi-
ous generic resemblance to some scenes which pro-
duce less elevating results. On the day of some
momentous race or cock-fight, a parcel of sporting
devotees, "regular bricks," perhaps, agree to cele-
brate the occasion in a tavern, and when the hilarity

The Roxburghe Club. 269

of the evening is at its climax, some festive orator,
whose enthusiasm has raised him to the table, sug-
gests, amidst loud hurrahs and tremendous table-
rapping, that the casual meeting should be converted
into an annual festival, to celebrate the event which
has brought them together. At such an assemblage,
the list of toasts will probably include Eclipse, Co-
therstone, Mameluke, Plenipo, the Flying Dutch-
man, and other illustrious quadrupeds, along with
certain bipeds, distinguished in the second degree as
breeders, trainers, and riders, and may perhaps cul-
minate in " the turf and the stud all over the world."
With a like appropriate reference to the common
bond of sympathy, the Roxburghe toasts included
the uncouth names of certain primitive printers, as
Valdarfer himself, Pannartz, Fust, and Schoeffher,
terminating in "The cause of Bibliomania all over
the world." ^

^ As of other influential documents, there have been various ver-
sions of the Roxburghe list of toasts, and a corresponding amount of
critical discussion, which leaves the impression common to such dis-
putes, that this important manifesto was altered and enlarged from
time to time. The version which bears the strongest marks of com-
pleteness and authenticity, was found among the papers of Mr Hazle-
wood, of whom hereafter. It is here set down as nearly in its
original shape as the printer can give it : —

W^t ©rin: of ■^ SDostes.

SGfje Immnrtal JKcmorg of

Koijn IBttfe of IRorfrargi^e.

ffljjrfetopficr FBlSarfw, ^rmtn: of tfjc ffijcamreon of

1471.

270 His Club.

The club thus abruptly formed, consisted of
affluent collectors, some of them noble, with a
sprinkling of zealous practical men, who assisted
them in their great purchases, while doing minor
strokes of business for themselves. These, who
in some measure fed on the crumbs that fell from
the master's table, were in a position rather too
closely resembling the professionals in a hunt or
cricket club. The circle was a very exclusive one,
however; the number limited to thirty-one members,
'' one black ball excluding ; " and it used to be re-
marked, that it was easier to get into the Peerage
or the Privy Council than into " the Roxburghe."

Nothing has done so much to secure the potent
influence of clubs as the profound secrecy in which

ffiuitmitrg, ihist, aitlr .Scfjoeffljct, tltc JiibnttDts of

tfjE att Df Prtnting.

JKEtlltam Caxton, tfit JFatfjn nf tfje iBritisfr Pwss.

JBamc Saliana ISerrarrs, an! tfjt St aiiatts ^rcss.

fflSEgnftgn He aSEorte, anS aCvitfjarU ?3gitsan, X\t Hlus^

trinus Sucwasnts of raiEiam ffiaitoit.

SCfje aiBtee JFamtlg, at "Smtt.

®i)t ffiiuntB JFantilg, at JTortnce.

Wcjt SoctEtg of tije 93ifaltop!jilts at ^arts.

SCflE ^Irospnitg of tfjc lEloximrgfje Club.

ffifrt Cattse of BtWiomania all obcr tfie fflSEorlB.

It will be seen that this accomplished black -letterer must have
been under a common delusion, that. our ancestors not only wrote
but pronounced the definite article "the"as "ye." Every blunderer
ambitious of success in fabricating old writings is sure to have re-
course to this trick, which serves for his immediate detection. The
Gothic alphabet, in fact, as used in this country, had a Theta for

The Roxburghe Club. 271

their internal or domestic traftsactions have gen-
erally been buried. The great safeguard of this
secrecy will be found in that rigid rule of our
social code which prohibits every gentleman from
making public the affairs of the private circle ; and
if from lack of discretion, as it is sometimes gently
termed, this law is supposed to have a lax hold on
any one, he is picked off by the " one," " two,"
"three black balls." It is singular that a club so
small and exclusive as the Roxburghe should have
proved an exception to the rule of secrecy, and that
the world has been favoured with revelations of its
doings which have made it the object of more
amusement than reverence. In fact, through failure
of proper use of the black ball, it got possession of

expressing in one letter our present t and h conjoined. When it was
abandoned, some printers substituted for it the letter y as most
nearly resembling it in shape, hence the "ye" which occurs some-
times in old books, but much more frequently in modern imitations
of them.

The primitive Roxburgheians used to sport these toasts as a symbol
of knowingness and high caste in book-hunting freemasonry. Their
representative man happening, in a tour in the Highlands, to open
his refreshment wallet on the top of Ben Lomond, pledged his guide-
in the potent vin dii pays to Christopher Valdarfer, John Gutemberg,
and the others. The Celt had no objection in the world to pledge
successive glasses to these names, which he had no doubt belonged
' ' to fery respectaple persons, " probably to the chief landed gentry of
his entertainer's neighbourhood. But the best Glenlivet would not
induce him to pledge "the cause of Bibliomania all over the world,"
being unable to foresee what influence the utterance of words so
unusual and so suspiciously savouring of demonology might exercise
over his future destiny.

272 His Club.

a black sheep, in the person of a certain Joseph
Hazlewood. He had achieved a sort of reputation
in the book -hunting community by discovering the
hidden author of Drunken Barnaby's Journal. In
reality, however, he was a sort of literary Jack
Brag. As that amusing creation of Theodore
Hook's practical imagination mustered himself with
sporting gentlemen through his command over the
technicalities or slang of the kennel and the turf, so
did Hazlewood sit at the board with scholars and
aristocratic book -collectors through a free use of
their technical phraseology. In either case, if the
indulgence in these terms descended into a motley
grotesqueness, it was excused as excessive fervour
carrying the enthusiast off his feet. When Hazle-
wood's treasures — for he was a collector in his way
— -were brought to the hammer, the scraps and
odds and ends it contained were found classified
in groups under such headings as these — Garlands
of Gravity, Poverty's Pot Pourri, Wallat of Wit,
Beggar's Balderdash, Octagonal Olio, Zany's Zo-
diac, Noddy's Nuncheon, Mumper's Medley, Quaf-
fing Quavers to Quip Queristers, Tramper's Twattle,
or Treasure and Tinsel from the Tewksbury Tank,
and the like. He edited reprints of some rare
books — that is to say, he saw them accurately re-
printed letter by letter. Of these one has a name
which — risking due castigation if I betray gross
ignorance by the supposition — I think he must

The Roxburghe Club. 273

certainly have himself bestowed on it, as it excels
the most outrageous pranks of the alliterative age.
It is called, " Green - Room Gossip ; or, Gravity
Gallinipt ; A Gallimaufry got up to guile Gym-
nastical and Gyneocratic Governments; Gathered
and Garnished by Gridiron Gabble, Gent, Godson
to Mother Goose."

The name of Joseph Hazlewood sounds well ; it
is gentleman-like, and its owner might have passed
it into such friendly commemoration as that of
Bliss, Cracherode, Heber, Sykes, Utterson, Town-
ley, Markland, Hawtrey, and others generally under-
stood to be gentlemen, and, in virtue of their
bookish propensities, scholars. He might even,
for the sake of his reprints, have been thought an
"able editor," had it not been for his unfortunate
efforts to chronicle the doings of the club he had
got into.^ His History, in ma"nuscript, was sold

' A voice from the other side of the Atlantic reveals the portentous
nature of the machinery with which Mr Hazlewood conducted his ed-
itorial labours. The following is taken from the book on the Private
Libraries of New York, already so freely quoted : —

"A unique book of unusual interest to the bibliophile in this de-
partment is the copy of Ancient and Critical Essays upon English
Poets and Poesy, edited by Joseph Hazlewood, 2 vols. 4to, London,
1815. This is Hazlewood's own copy, and it is enriched and decor-
ated by him in the most extravagant style of the bibliomaniac school
in which he held so eminent a position., It is illustrated throughout
with portraits, some of which are very rare ; it contains all the letters
which the editor received in relation to it from the eminent literary
antiquarians of his day ; and not only these, but all the collations and
memoranda of any consequence which were made for him during its
progress, frequently by men of literary distinction. To these are

S

2 74 His Club:

with his other treasures after his death, and was
purchased by the proprietor of the ^Athenaeum,
where fragments of it were printed some fifteen years
ago, along with editorial comments, greatly to the
amusement, if not to the edification, of the public.

In these revelations we find how long a probation
the system of book clubs had to pass through, before
it shook off the convivial propensities which con-
tinued to clustei- round the normal notion of a club,
and reached the dry asceticism and attention to the
duties of printing and editing, by which the greater
number of book clubs are distinguished. It was at
first a very large alUowance of sack to the proportion
of literary food, and it was sarcastically remarked
that the club had spent a full thousand pounds in
guzzling before it had produced a single valuable
volume. We have some of the bills of fare at the

added all the announcements of the work, together with the impres-
sions of twelve cancelled pages, printed four in one form and eight in
another, apparently by way of experiment, with other cancelled
matter ; tracings of the facsimile woodcuts of the title to Puttenham's
Arte of Enghsh Poesie, with a proof of it on India paper, and three
impressions of this title, one all in black, one with the letter in black
and the device in red, and the third vice vend; tracings for, and
proofs of, other woodcuts ; an impression of a leaf printed to be put
into a single copy of the work, &c. &c. ; for we must stop, although
we have but indicated the nature rather than the quantity of the
matter, all of it unique, which gives this book its peculiar value. But
it should be remarked besides, that the editorial part of the work is
interleaved for the purpose of receiving Mr Hazlewood's explanations
and corrections, and those that he received from literary friends,
which alone would give this copy a singular interest. It is bound by
Clarke in maroon morocco."'

The Roxburghe Club. 275

" Roxburghe Revels," as they were called. In one,
for instance, there may be counted, in the first
course, turtle cooked five different ways, along with
turbot, John dory, tendrons of lamb, souch^e of had-
dock, ham, chartreuse, and boiled chickens. The
bill amounted to ;^S, 14s. a-head ; or, as Hazlewood
expresses it, " according to the long - established
principles of ' Maysterre Gockerre,' each person had
£^, 14s. to pay." Some illustrious strangers appear
to have been occasionally invited to attend the sym-
posium. If the luxurious table spread for them
may have occasioned them some surprise, they must
have experienced still more in the tenor of the in-
vitation to be present, which, coming in the name
of certain "Lions of Literature," as their historian
and the author of the invitation calls them, was
expressed in these terms — -" The honour of your
company is requested to dine with the Roxburghe
dinner, on Wednesday the 17th instant." One might
be tempted to offer the reader a fuller specimen of
the historian's style ; but unfortunately its charac-
teristics, grotesque as they are, cannot be exemplified
in their full breadth without being also given at full
length. The accounts of the several dinners read
like photographs of a mind wandering in the mazes
of indigestion-begotten nightmare.^

' It is but fair, however, to a reputation which was considerable
within its own special circle, to let the reader judge for himself ; so,
if he think the opportunity worth the trouble of wading through small

276 His Club.

When Dibdin protested against the publication
of this record, he described it a great deal too at-
tractively when he called it " the concoction of one
in his gayer and unsuspecting moments — the re-
pository of private confidential communications — a
mere memorandum-book of what had passed at con-
vivial meetings, and in which 'winged words' and
flying notes of merry gentlemen and friends were
obviously incorporated." No ! certainly wings and
flying are not the ideas that naturally associate with
the historian of the Roxburghe, although, in one
instance, the dinner is sketched off" in the following
epigrammatic sentence, which startles the reader like
a plover starting up in a dreary moor : " Twenty-
one members met joyfully, dined comfortably, chal-
lenged eagerly, tippled prettily, divided regretfully.

print, he may read the following specimen of Mr Hazlewood's style.
He would certainly himself not have objected to its being taken as a
criterion of the whole, since he was evidently proud of it.

" Consider, in the bird's-eye view of the banquet, the trencher cuts,
foh ! nankeen displays : as intersticed vrith many a brilliant drop to
friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the
incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better
dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to
commune, that can converse, and each willing to give and receive
information, more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered
conviviality — a social compound of mirth, wit, and wisdom ; com-
bining all that Anacreon was famed for, tempered with the reason of
Demosthenes, and intersected with the archness of Scaliger. It is
true we had not any Greek verses in praise of the grape ; but we had,
as a tolerable substitute, the ballad of the ' Bishop of Hereford and
Robin Hood,' sung by Mr Dodd, and it was of his own composing.
It is true, we had not any long oration denouncing the absentees, the

The Roxburghe Club. 277

and paid the bill most cheerfully." On another
occasion the historian's enthusiasm was too expan-
sive to be confined to plain prose, and he inflated
it in lyric verse : —

" Brave was the banquet, the red red juice,
Hilarity's gift sublime.
Invoking the heart to kindred use,
And bright'ning halo of time. "

This, and a quantity of additional matter of like
kind, was good fun to the scorners, and, whether
any of the unskilful laughed at it, scarcely made
even the judicious grieve, for they thought that
those who had embarked in such pompous follies
deserved the lash unconsciously administered to
them in his blunders by an unhappy member of
their own order.

cabinet council, or any other set of men ; but there was not a man
present that at one hour and seventeen minutes after the cloth was
removed but could have made a Demosthenic speech far superior to
any record of antiquity. It is true, no trace of wit is going to be
here preserved, for the flashes were too general, and what is the
critical sagacity of a Scaliger compared to our chairman ? Ancients
believe it ! We were not dead drunk, and therefore lie quiet under
the table for once, and let a few modems be uppermost."

The following chronicle of the third dinner and second anniversary
records an interesting little personal incident : —

' ' After Lord Spencer left the chair, it was taken, I believe, by Mr
Heber, who kept it up to a late hour, — Mr Dodd very volatile and
somewhat singular, at the same time , quite novel, in amusing the
company with Robin Hood ditties and similar productions. I give
this on af^er report, having left the room very early from severe attack
of sickness, which appeared to originate in some vile compound par-
took of at dinner. "

278 His Club.

In fact, however, this was the youthful giant
sowing his wild oats. Along with them there lay
also, unseen at first, the seed of good fruit. Of these,
was a resolution adopted at the second meeting, and
thus set forth by the historian in his own peculiar
style : " It was proposed and concluded for each
member of the club to reprint a scarce piece of
ancient lore to be given to the members, one copy
to be on vellum for the chairman, and only as many
copies as members."

The earliest productions following on this reso-
lution were on a very minute scale. One member,
stimulated to distinguish himself by " a merry con-
ceited jest," reprinted a French morsel called "La
Contenance de la Table," and had it disposed of
in such wise, that as each guest opened his napkin
expecting to find a dinner-roll, he disclosed the
typographical treasure. It stands No. 6 on the
list of Roxburghe books, and is probably worth
an enormous sum. The same enthusiast reprinted
in a more formal manner a rarity called " News
from Scotland, declaring the damnable life of Dr
Fian, a notable sorcerer," &c. This same morsel
was afterwards reprinted for another club, in a
shape calculated almost to create a contemptuous
contrast between the infantine efforts of the Rox-
burghe and the manly labours of its robust- fol-
lowers. It is inserted as what the French call a
pike justificative in Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, edited

The Roxbi^rghe Club. 279

for the Bannatyne, and there occupies ten of the
more than 2000 pages which make, up that solid
book.

It was not until the year 1827 that a step was
taken by the Roxburghe Club which might be
called its first exhibition of sober manhood. Some
of the members, ashamed of the -paltry nature of
the volumes circulated in the name of the club,
bethought themselves of uniting to produce a book
of national value. They took Sir Frederick Mad-
den into their counsels, and authorised him to print
eighty copies of the old metrical romance of Have-
lok the Dane. This gave great dissatisfaction to
the historian, who muttered how "a MS. not dis-
covered by a member of the club was selected, and
an excerpt obtained, not furnished by the industry
or under the inspection of any one member, nor
edited by a member ; but, in fact, after much pro
and con., it was made a complete hireling concern,
truly at the expense of the club, from the copying
to the publishing."

The value of this book has been attested by the
extensive critical examination it has received, and
by the serviceable aid it has given to all recent
writers on the infancy of English literature. It
was followed by another interesting old romance,
William and the Wer Wolf, valuable not only as
a specimen of early literature, but for the light it
throws on the strange wild superstition dealing with

28o His Club.

the conversion of men into wolves, which has been
found so widely prevalent that it has received a
sort of scientific title in the word Lycanthropy.
These two books made the reputation of the Rox-
burghe, and proved an example and encouragement
to the clubs which began to arise more or less on
its model. It was a healthy protest against the
Dibdinism which had ruled the destinies of the
club, for Dibdin had beerj its master, and was the
Gamaliel at whose feet Hazlewood and others
patiently sat. Of the term now used, the best ex-
planation I can give ' is this, that in the selection of
books — other questions, such as rarity or condition,
being set aside or equally balanced — a general pre-
ference is to be given to those which are the most
witless, preposterous, and in every literary sense
valueless — which are, in short, rubbish. What is
here meant will be easily felt by any one who
chooses to consult the book which Dibdin issued
under the title of " The Library Companion, or the
Young Man's Guide and the Old Man's Comfort in
the choice of a Library." This, it will be observed,
is not intended as a manual of rare or curious, or
in any way peculiar books, but as the instruction
of a Nestor on the best books for study and use
in all departments of literature. Yet one will look
in vain there for such names as Montaigne, Shaftes-
bury, Benjamin Franklin, D'Alembert, Turgot,
Adam Smith, Malebranchcj Lessing, Goethe; Schiller,

The Roxburghe Club. 281

F6nelon, Burke, Kant, Richter, Spinoza, Flechier, and
many others. Characteristically enough, if you turn
up Rousseau in the index, you will find Jean Bap-
tiste, but not Jean Jacques. You will search in
vain for Dr Thomas Reid, the metaphysician, but
will readily find Isaac Reed, the editor. If you
look for Molinaeus or Du Moulin, it is not there,
but alphabetic vicinity gives you the good for-
tune to become acquainted with "Moule, Mr, his
Bibliotheca Heraldica." The name Hooker will be
found, not to guide the reader to the Ecclesiastical
Polity, but to Dr Jackson Hooker's Tour in Ice-
land. Lastly) if any one shall search for Hartley
on Man, he will find in the place it might occupy,
or has reference to, the editorial services of " Hazle-
wood, Mr Joseph."

Though the Roxburghe, when it came under the
fostering care of the scholarly Botfield, and secured
the services of men like Madden, Wright, and
Taylor, outgrew the pedantries in which it had
been reared, and performed much valuable literary
work, yet its chief merit is in the hints its practice
afforded to others. The leading principle; indeed,
which the other clubs so largely adopted after the
example of the Roxburghe, was not an entire
novelty. The idea of keeping up the value of a
book by limiting the impression, so as to restrain
it within the number who might desire to possess
it, was known before the birth of this the oldest

282 His Club.

book club. The practice was sedulously followed
by Hearne the antiquary, and others, who provided
old chronicles and books of the class chiefly
esteemed by the book-hunter. The very fame of
the restricted number, operating on the selfish jeal-
ousy of man's nature, brought out competitors for
the possession of the book, who never would have
thought of it but for the pleasant idea of keeping
it out of the hands of some one else.

There are several instances on record of an un-
known book lying in the printer's warerooms, dead
from birth and forgotten, having life and importance
given to it by the report that all the copies, save a
few, have been destroyed by a fire in the premises.
This is an illustration in the sibylline direction of
value being conferred by the decrease of the com-
modity ; but by judiciously adjusting the number
of copies printed, the remarkable phenomenon has
been exhibited of the rarity of a book being in-
creased by an increase in the number of copies.
To understand how this may come to pass, it is
necessary to recall the precept elsewhere set forth,
and look on rarity as not an absolute quality, but
as relative to the number who desire to possess the
article. Ten copies which two hundred people
want constitute a rarer book than two copies which
twenty people want. Even to a sole remaining
copy of some forgotten book, lying dead, as it were,
and buried in some obscure library, may collective

Some Book- Club Men. 283

vital rarity be imparted. Let its owner print,- say,
twenty copies for distribution — the book-hunting
community have got the "hark-away," and are off
after it. In this way, before the days of the clubs,
many knowing people multiplied rarities ; and at the
present day there are reprints by the clubs them-
selves, of much greater pecuniary value than the
rare books from which they have been multiplied.

Same 33aoft=ei;itt6 iWeti.

i|0 one probably did more to raise the
condition of the book clubs than Sir
Walter Scott. In 1823 the Roxburghe
made proffers of membership to him,
partly, it would seem, under the influence of a
waggish desire to disturb his great secret, which
had not yet been revealed. Dibdin, weighting him-
self with more than his usual burden of ponderous
jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott
the desire of the club that the Author of Waverley,
with whom it was supposed that he had the means
of communicating, would accept of the seat at the
club vacated by the death of Sir Mark Sykes.
Scott got through the affair ingeniously with a little
coy fencing that deceived no one, and was finally
accepted as the Author of Waverley's representa-
tive. The . Roxburghe had, however, at that time,

284 His Club.

done nothing in serious book-club business, having
let loose only the small flight of flimsy sheets
of letterpress already referred to. It was Scott's
own favourite club, the Bannatyne, that first pro-
jected the plan of printing substantial and valuable
volumes,

At the commencement of the same year, 1823,
when he took his seat at the Roxburghe (he did not
take his bottle there, which was the more impor-
tant object, for some time after), he wrote to the
late Robert Pitcairn, the editor of the Criminal
Trials, in these terms : " I have long thought that
a something of a bibliomaniacal society might be
formed here, for the prosecution of the important
task of publishing dilettante editions of our national
literary curiosities. Several persons of rank, I be-
lieve, would willingly become members, and there
are enough of good operatives. What would you
think of such an association ? David Laing was
ever keen for it ; but the death of Sir Alexander
Boswell and of Alexander Oswald has damped his
zeal. I think, if a good plan were formed, and a
certain number of members chosen, the thing would
still do well." 1

Scott gave the Bannatyners a song for their fes-
tivities. It goes to the tune of " One Bottle More,"
and is a wonderful illustration of his versatile powers,

^ Notices of the Bannatyne Club, privately printed.

Some Book-Club Men. 285

in the admirable bibulous sort of joviality which he
distils, as it were, from the very dust of musty vol-
umes, thus : —

"John Pinkerton next, and I'm truly concerned
I can't call that worthy so candid as learned ;
He railed at the plaid, and blasphemed the claymore,
And set Scots by the ears in his one volume more.
One volume more, my friends, one volume more —
Celt and Goth shall be pleased with one volume more.

As bitter as gall, and as sharp as a razor.

And feeding on herbs as a Nebuchadnezzar,

His diet too acid, his temper too sour.

Little Ritson came out with his two volumes more.
But one volume, my friends, one volume more —
We'll dine on roast beef, and print one volume more."

I am tempted to add a word or two of prosaic
gossip and comment to the characteristics thus so
happily hit off in verse. John Pinkerton was, upon
the whole, a man of simple character. The sim-
plicity consisted in the thorough belief that never,
in any country or at any period of the world's his-
tory, had there been created a human being des-
tined to be endowed with even an approach to the
genius, wisdom, and learning of which he was him-
self possessed. He never said a word in praise of
any fellow-being, for none had ever risen so much
above the wretched level of the stupid world he
looked down upon as to deserve such a distinction.
He condescended, however, to distribute censure,
and that with considerable liberality. For instance,
take his condensed notice of an unfortunate worker

286 His Club.

in his own field, Walter Goodal, whose works are
"fraught with furious railing, contemptible scurril-
ity, low prejudice, small reading, and vulgar error."
Thus having dealt with an unfortunate and rather
obscure author, he shows his impartiality by dealing
with Macpherson, then in the zenith of his fame, in
this wise : " His etymological nonsense he assists
with gross falsehoods, and pretends to skill in the
Celtic without quoting one single MS. In short,
he deals wholly in assertion and opinion, and it is
clear that he had not even an idea what learning
and science are." Nor less emphatic is his railing at
the plaid and blaspheming at the claymore. Donald
and his brethren are thus described : " Being mere
savages, but one degree above brutes, they remain
still in much the same state of society as in the
days of Julius Caesar ; and he who travels among
the Scottish Highlanders, the old Welsh, or wild
Irish, may see at once the ancient and modern state
of women among the Celts, when he beholds these
savages stretched in their huts, and their poor
women toiling like beasts of burden for their un-
manly husbands;" and finally, "being absolute
savages, and, like Indians and negroes, will ever
continue so, all we can do is to plant colonies
among them, and by this, and encouraging their
emigration, try to get rid of the breed."

This fervency is all along of the question whether
the Picts, or Piks, as Pinkerton chooses to call

Some Book-Club Men. 287

them, were Celts or Goths. If we turn to the
books of his opponent on this question, Joseph
Ritson, we find him paid back in his own coin, and
that so genuine, that, on reading about gross ignor-
ance, falsehood, and folly, one would think he was
still enjoying Pinkerton's own flowers of eloquence,
were it not that the tenor of the argument has
somehow turned to the opposite side. I drop into
the note below a specimen from the last words of
this controversy, as characteristic of the way in
which it was conducted, and a sample of the kind
of dry fuel which, when ignited by these incen-
diaries, blazed into so much rage.^

Ritson was a man endowed with almost super-
human irritability of temper, and he had a genius
fertile in devising means of giving scope to its
restless energies. I have heard that it was one
of his obstinate fancies, when addressing a letter to

1 "See Pinkerton's Enquiry, i. 173, &c., 369. He explains the
Vecturiones of Marcellinus, ' Vectveriar, or Pikish men, as,' he un-
truly says, ' the Icelandic writers call them in their Norwegian seats
Vik-veriar, ' and, either ignorantly or dishonestly to countenance this
most false and absurd hypothesis, corrupts the Pihtas of the Saxons
into Pihtar, a termination impossible to their language. It is true,
indeed, that he has stumbled upon a passage in Rudbeck's Atlantica,
i. 672, in which that very fanciful and extravagant writer speaks of
the Packar, Baggar, Paikstar, Baggeboar, Pitar, and Medel Pakcar,
whom he pretends ' Britanni vero Peiktar appellant, et Peictonum
tam eorum qui in Galliis quam in Britannia resident genitores
faciunt. ' He finds these Pacti also in the Argonauticks, v. 1067 ; and
his whole work seems the composition of a man whom ' much learning
ha;th made mad.'" — Ritson's Annals of the Caledonians, &c., i. 81.

2 88 His Club.

a friend of the male sex, instead of using the
ordinary prefix of Mr or the affix Esq., to use the
term " Master," as Master John Pinkerton, Master
George Chalmers. The agreeable result of this
was, that his communications on intricate and irri-
tating antiquarian disputes were delivered to, and
perused by, the young gentlemen of the family, so
opening up new little intricate avenues, fertile in
controversy and misunderstanding. But he had
another and more inexhaustible resource for his
superabundant irritability. In his numerous books
he insisted on adopting a peculiar spelling. It was
not phonetic, nor was it etymological ; it was simply
Ritsonian. To understand the efficacy of this ar-
rangement, it must be remembered that the instinct
of a printer is to spell according to rule, and that
every deviation from the ordinary method can only
be carried out by a special contest over each word.
General instructions on such a matter are apt to
produce unexpected results. One very sad instance
I can now recall ; it was that of a French author
who, in a new edition of his works, desired to alter
the old-fashioned spelling of the imperfect tense
from o to a. To save himself trouble, on the first
instance occurring in each proof, he put in the mar-
gin a general direction to change all such o's into
a's. The instruction was so literally and comprehen-
sively obeyed, that, happening to glance his eye over
the volume on its completion, he found the letter o

Some Book-Club Men. 289

entirely excluded from it Even the sacred name of
Napoleon was irreverently printed Napalean, and
the Revolution was the Revalutian. Ritson had far
too sharp a scent for any little matter of controversy
and irritating discussion to get into a difficulty like
this. He would fight each step of the way, and such
peculiarities as the following, profusely scattered
over his books, may be looked upon as the names
of so many battles or skirmishes with his printers
— compileer, write'e'r, wel, kil, onely, probablely. Even
when he condescended to use the spelling common
to the rest of the nation, he could pick out little
causes of quarrel with the way of putting it in type
— as, for instance, in using the word Ass, which
came naturally to him, he would not follow the
practice of his day in the use of the long and short
(fs), but inverted the arrangement thus, sf This
strange creature exemplified the opinion that every
one must have some creed — something from with-
out having an influence over thought and action
stronger than the imperfect apparatus of human rea-
son. Scornfully disdaining revelation from above,
he groped below, and found for himself a little
fetish made of turnips and cabbages. He was as
fanatical a devotee of vegetarianism as others have
been of a middle state or adult baptism ; and, after
having torn through a life of spiteful controversy
with his fellow - men, and ribaldry of all sacred
things, he thus expressed the one weight hang-

T

290 His Club.

ing on his conscience, that " on one occasion, when
tempt^ed by wet, cold, and hunger in the south of
Scotland, he ventured to eat a few potatoes dressed
under the roast, nothing less repugnant to feelings
being to be had." ^

To return to the services of him of mightier re-
nown, whose genial drolleries led to these notices.
Scott printed, as a contribution to his favourite
club, the record of the trial of two Highlanders for
murder, which brought forth some highly character-
istic incidents. The victim was a certain Sergeant
Davis, who had charge of one of the military parties
or guards dispersed over the Highlands to keep
them in order after the '45. Davis had gone from
his own post at Braemar up Glen Clunie to meet
the guard from Glenshee. He chose to send his
men back and take a day's shooting among the
wild mountains at the head of the glen, and was
seen no more. How he was disposed of could
easily be divined in a general way, but there were
no particulars to be had. It happened, however,
that there was one Highlander who, for reasons
best known to himself — they were never got at —
had come to the resolution of bringing his brother
Highlanders, who had made away with the ser-
geant, to justice. It was necessary for his own

^ See an Essay on Abstinence from Animal Food as a Moral Duty.
By Joseph Ritson.

Some Book- Club Men. 291

safety, however, that he should be under the pres-
sure of a motive or impulse sufficient to justify so
heartless and unnatural a proceeding, otherwise he
would himself have been likely to follow the ser-
geant's fate. Any reference to his conscience, the
love of justice, respect for the laws of the land, or
the like, would of course have been received with
well -merited ridicule and scorn. He must have
some motive which a sensible Highlander could
admit as probable in itself, and sufficient for its
purpose.

Accordingly the accuser said he had been visited
by the sergeant's ghost, who had told him every-
thing, and laid on him the heavy burden of bring-
ing his slaughterers in the flesh to their account.
If that were not done, the troubled spirit would
not cease to walk the earth, and so long as he
walked would the afflicted denouncer continue to
be the victim of his ghostly visits. The case was
tried at Edinburgh, and though the evidence was
otherwise clear and complete, the Lowland jury
were perplexed and put out by the supernatural
■episode. A Highland story, with a ghost acting
witness at second-hand, roused all their Saxon
prejudices, and they cut the knot of difficulties
by declining to convict. A point was supposed to
have been malde, when the counsel for the defence
asked the ghost-seer what language the ghost, who
-was English wheft in the flesh, spoke to the High-

292 His Club.

lander, who knew not that language ; and the wit-
ness answered, through his interpreter, that the
spectre spoke as good Gaelic as ever was heard
in Lochaber. Sir Walter Scott, however, remarks
that there was no incongruity in this, if we once
get over the first step of the ghost's existence. It
is curious that Scott does not seem to have woven
the particulars of this affair into any one of his
novels.

Among those who contributed to place the stamp
of a higher character on the labours of the book
clubs, one of the most remarkable was Sir Alex-
ander Boswell. A time there was, unfortunately,
when his name could not easily be dissociated from
exasperating political events ; but now that the
generation concerned in them has nearly passed
away, it becomes practicable, even from the side
of his political opponents, to glance at his literary
abilities and accomplishments without recalling ex-
citing recollections. He was a member of the Rox-
burghe, and though he did not live to see the im-
provement in the issues of that institution, or the
others which kept pace with it, he, alone and
single-handed; set the example of printing the
kind of books which it was afterwards the merit
of the book clubs to promulgate. He gave them,
in fact, their tone. He had at his paternal home
of Auchinleck a remarkable collection of rare books
and manuscripts ; one of these afforded the text

Some Book-Club Men. 293

from which the romance of Sir Tristrem was
printed. He reprinted from the one remaining
copy in his own possession the disputation be-
tween John Knox and Quentin Kennedy, a priest
who came forward against the great Reformer as
the champion of the old religion. From the Auch-
inleck press came also reprints of Lodge's Fig for
Momus, Churchyard's Mirrour of Man, the Book
of the Chess, Sir James Dier's Remembrancer of
the Life of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the Dialogus inter
Deum et Evam, and others.

The possession of a private printing-press is, no
doubt, a very appalling type of bibliomania. Much
as has been told us of the awful 'scale on which
drunkards consume their favoured poison, one is
not accustomed to hear of their setting up private
stills for their own individual consumption. There
is a Sardanapalitan excess in this bibliographical
luxuriousness which refuses to partake with other
vulgar mortals in the common harvest of the public
press, but must itself minister to its own tastes and
demands. The owner of such an establishment
is subject to no extraneous caprices' about breadth
of margins, size of type, quarto or folio, leaded or
unleaded lines ; he dictates his own terms ; he is
master of the situation, as the French say ; and is
the true autocrat of literature. There have been
several renowned private presses: Walpole's, at
Strawberry Hill ; Mr Johnes's^ at Hafod ; Allan's,

294 -^^-^ Club.

at the Grange ; and the Lee Priory Press. None
of these, however, went so distinctly into the groove
afterwards followed by the book clubs as Sir Alex-
ander Boswell's Auchinleck Press. In the Biblio-
graphical Decameron is a brief history, by Sir
Alexander himself, of the rise and progress of his
press. He tells us how he had resolved to print
Knox's Disputation : " For this purpose I was con-
strained to purchase two small fonts of black-letter,
and to have punches cut for eighteen or twenty
double letters and contractions. I was thus en-
listed and articled into the service, and being in-
fected with the type fever, the fits have periodically
returned. In the year 1 8 1 5, having viewed a port-
able press invented by Mr John Ruthven, an ingeni-
ous printer in Edinburgh, I purchased one, and
commenced compositor. At this period, my brother
having it in contemplation to present Bamfield to
the Roxburghe Club, and not aware of the poverty
and insignificance of my establishment, expressed
a wish that his tract should issue from the Auchin-
leck Press. I determined to gratify him, and the
portable .press being too small for general purposes,
I exchanged it for one of Mr Ruthven's full-sized
ones; and having increased my stock to eight small
fonts, roman and italic, with the necessary appur-
tenances, I placed the whole in a cottage, built
originally for another purpose, very pleasantly situ-
ated on the bank of a rivulet, and, although con-

Some Book-Chib Men. 295

cealed from view by the surrounding wood, not a
quarter of a mile from my house." ^

To show the kind of man who co-operated with
Scott in such frivolities, let me say a word or two
more about Sir Alexander. He was the son, ob-
serve, of Johnson's Jamie Boswell, but he was about
as like his father as an eagle might be to a peacock.
To use a common colloquial phrase, he was a man
of genius, if ever there was one. Had he been a
poorer and socially humbler man than he was— rhad
he had his bread and his position to make— he
would probably have achieved immortality. Some
of his songs are as familiar to the world as those
of Burns, though their author is forgotten, — as, for
instance, the song of parental farewell, beginning —

" Good-night, and joy be wi' ye a' ;
Your harmless mirth has cheered my heart,"

and ending with this fine and genial touch —

" The auld win speak, the young ma,un hear ;

Be canty, but be good and leal ;
Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear,

Another's aye hae heart to feel :
So, ere I set I'll see you shine,

I'll see you triumph ere I fa' ;
My parting breath shall boast you mine.

Good-night, and joy be wi' you a'. "

His "Auld Gudeman, ye're a drucken carle,"
"Jenny's Bawbee," and "Jenny dang the Weaver,"

^ Bibliographical Decameron, vol. ii. p. 454. .

296 His Club.

are of another kind, and perhaps fuller of the pecu-
liar spirit of the man. This consisted in hitting off
the deeper and typical characteristics of Scottish
life with an easy touch that brings it all home at
once. His lines do not seem as if they were com-
posed by an effort of talent, but as if they were the
spontaneous expressions of nature.

Take the following specimen of ludicrous pompos-
ity, which must suffer a little by being quoted from
memory: it describes a Highland procession : —

" Come the Grants o' Tullochgorum,
Wi' their pipers on afore 'em ;
Proud the mithers are that bore 'em,
Fee fuddle, fan fum.

Come the Grants o' Rothiemurchus,
Ilka ane his sword an' durk has,
Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is,
Fee fuddle, fau fum."

To comprehend the spirit of this, one must en-
dow himself with the feelings of a Lowland Scot
before Waverley and Rob Roy imparted a glow
of romantic interest to the Highlanders. The pom-
pous and the ludicrous were surely never more
happily interwoven. One would require to go
further back still to appreciate the spirit of " Skel-
don Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted." It is a picture
of old Ayrshire feudal rivalry and hatred. The
Laird of Bargainy resolved to humiliate his neigh-
bour and enemy, the Laird of Kerse, by a forcible

Some Book- Club Men. 297

occupation of part of his territory. For the purpose
of making this aggression flagrantly insulting, it
was done by tethering or staking a female pig on
the domain of Kerse. The animal was, of course,
attended by a sufficient body of armed men for her
protection. It was necessary for his honour -that the
Laird of Kerse should drive the animal and her
attendants away, and hence came a bloody battle
about "the flitting of the sow.'' In the contest,
Kerse's eldest son and hope, Jock, is killed, and the
point or moral of the narrative is, the contempt with
which the old laird looks on that event, as compared
with the grave affair of flitting the sow. A retainer
who comes to tell him the result of the battle stam-
mers in his narrative on account of his grief for
Jock, and is thus pulled up by the laird —

" ' Is the sow flitted ? ' cries the carle ;
' Gie me an answer, short and plain —
Is the sow flitted, yammerin' wean ? ' "

To which the answer is —

' ' ' The sow, deil talc her, 's ower the water,
And at her back the Crawfords clatter ;
The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted. ' "

Hereupon the laird's exultation breaks forth, —

" 'My thumb for Jock — the sow's flitted I ' "

Another man of genius and learning, whose name
is a household one among the book clubs, is Robert

298 His Club.

Surtees, the historian of Durham. You may hunt
for it in vain among the biographical dictionaries.
Let us hope that this deficiency will be well sup-
plied in the Biographia Britannica, projected by Mr
Murray. Surtees was not certainly among those
who flare their qualities before the world — he was to
a peculiar degree addicted, as we shall shortly see,
to hiding his light under a bushel ; and so any little
notice of him in actual flesh and blood, such as this
left by his friend, the Rev. James Tate, master of
Richmond School, interests one : —

" One evening I was sitting alone — it was about
nine o'clock in the middle of summer — there came
a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself,
and a gentleman said with great modesty, ' Mr Tate,
I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine beg-
ged I would call upon you.' ' The master of Rich-
mond School is delighted to see you,' said I ; 'pray
walk in.' ' No, thank you, sir ; I have ordered a
bit of supper ; perhaps you will walk up with me ? '
' To be sure I will ; ' and away we went. As we
went along, I quoted a line from the Odyssey.
What was my astonishment to hear from Mr Sur-
tees, not the next only, but line after line of the
passage I had touched upon. Said I to myself,
' Good Master Tate, take heed ; it is not often you
catch such a fellow as this at Richmond.' I never
spent such an evening in my life." What a pity,
then, that he did not give us more of the evening,

Some Book-Club Men. 299

which seems to have left joyful memories to both :
for Surtees himself thus commemorated it in maca-
ronics, in which he was an adept : —

" Doctus Tatius hie residet,
Ad Coronam prandet ridet,
Spargit sales cum cachinno,
Lepido ore et concinno,
Ubique cams inter bonos
Rubei mentis prsesens honos."

In the same majestic folio in which this anecdote
may be found — the Memoir prefixed to the History
of Durham — we are likewise told how, when at
college, he was waiting on a Don on business ; and,
feeling coldish, stirred the fire. " Pray, Mr Sur-
tees," said the great man, "do you think that any
other undergraduate in the college would have taken
that liberty?" "Yes, Mr Dean," was the reply —
" any one as cool as I am ! " This would have been
not unworthy of Brummell. The next is not in
Brummell's line. Arguing with a neighbour about
his not going to church, the man said, "Why, sir,
the parson and I have quarrelled about the tithes."
"You fool," was the reply, "is that any reason why
you should go to hell?" Yet another. A poor
man, with a numerous family, lost his only cow.
Surtees was collecting a subscription to replace the
loss, and called on the Bishop of Lichfield, who was
Dean of Durham, and owner of the great tithes in
the parish, to ascertain what he would give. " Give ! "
said the bishop ; " why, a cow, to be sure. Go, Mr

300 His Club.

Surtees, to my steward, and tell him to give you as
much money as will buy the best cow you can find."
Surtees, astonished at this unexpected generosity,
said — "My Lord, I hope you will ride to heaven
upon the back of that cow." A while afterwards he
was saluted in the college by the late Lord Barring-
ton, with — " Surtees, what is the absurd speech that
I hear you have been making to the dean?" "I
see nothing absurd in it," was the reply ; " when the
dean rides to heaven on the back of that cow, many
of you prebendaries will be glad to lay hold of her
tail ! "

I have noted these innocent trifles concerning one
who is chiefly known as a deep and dry investi-
gator, for the purpose of propitiating the reader in
his favour, since the sacred cause of truth renders it
necessary to refer to another affair in which his con-
duct, however trifling it might be, was not innocent
He was addicted to literary practical jokes of an
audacious kind, and carried his presumption so far
as to impose on Sir Walter Scott a spurious ballad
which has a place in the Border Minstrelsy. Nor
is it by any means a servile imitation, which might
pass unnoticed in a crowd of genuine and better
ballads ; but it is one of the most spirited and one
of the most thoroughly endowed with individual
character in the whole collection. This guilty com-
position is known as "The Death of Featherston-
haugh," and begins thus : —

Some Book-Club Men. 301

" Hoot awa', lads, hoot awa' ;
Ha' ye heard how the Ridleys, and Thlrlwalls, and a',
Ha' set upon Albany Featherstonhaugh,
And taken his life at the Dead Man's Haugh ?

There was Williemoteswick

And Hardriding Dick,
And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will of the Wa',

I canna tell a', I canna tell a',
And many a mair that the deil may knaw.

The auld man went down, but Nicol his son
Ran awa' afore the fight was begun ;

And he run, and he run.

And afore they were done
There' was many a Featherston gat sic a stun,
As never was seen since the world begun.

I canna tell a', I canna tell a',

Some got a skelp and some got a claw.

But they gar't the Featherstons baud their jaw.
Some got a hurt, and some got nane,
Some had harness, and some got staen.''

This imposture, professing to be taken down from
the recitation of a woman eighty years old, was
accompanied with some explanatory notes, charac-
teristic of the dry antiquary, thus : " Hardriding
Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship,
but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat
of another family of that name, which, in the time
of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses in-
curred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the imme-
diate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o' the
Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so
called from its situation on the great Roman wall.
Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls de-
rived their name, is situated on the small river of

302 His Club.

Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumber-
land. It is near the wall, and takes its name from
the rampart having been thirled — that is, pierced or
breached — in its vicinity."

In the Life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime
is thus dryly set forth, in following up a statement
of the transmission of the manuscript, and of its
publication : " Yet all this was a mere figment of
Surtees's imagination, originating probably in some
whim of ascertaining how far he could identify him-
self with the stirring times, scenes, and poetical
compositions which his fancy delighted to dwell on.
This is proved by more than one copy among his
papers of this ballad, corrected and interlined, in
order to mould it to the' language, the manners,
and the feelings of the period and of the district to
which it refers. Mr Surtees jno doubt had wished
to have the success of his attempt tested by the
unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the
subject ; and the result must have been gratifying
to him."

In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution,
printed also in the Life of Surtees, there are some
words that must have brought misgivings and fear
of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott,
without apparently allowing doubts to enter his
mind, yet marked some peculiarities in the piece, in
which it differed from others. "Your notes upon
the parties concerned give it all the interest of

Some Book-Club Men. 303

authority, and it must rank, I suppose, among
those half-serious, half- ludicrous songs, in which the
poets of the Border delighted to describe what they
considered as the sport of swords. It is perhaps
remarkable, though it may be difficult to guess a
reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a differ-
ent stanza and character, and obviously sung to a
different kind of music, from those on the northern
Border. The gentleman who collected the words
may perhaps be able to describe the tune."

There is perhaps no system of ethics which lays
down with perfect precision the moral code on
literary forgeries, or enables us to judge of the
exact enormity of such offences. The world looks
leniently on them, and sometimes sympathises with
them as good jokes. Allan Cunningham, who, like
Ramsay, was called "honest Allan," did not lose
that character by the tremendous " rises " which he
took out of Cromek about those remains of Niths-
dale and Galloway song — a case in point so far
as principle goes, but differing somewhat in the
intellectual rank of the victim to the hoax. The
temptation to commit such offences is often ex-
tremely strong, and the injury seems slight, while
the offender probably consoles himself with the
reflection that he can immediately counteract it by
confession. Vanity, indeed, often joins conscien-
tiousness in hastening on a revelation. Surtees,
however, remained in obdurate silence, and I am

304 His Club.

not aware that any edition of the Minstrelsy draws
attention to his handiwork. Lockhart seems not
only to have been ignorant of it, but to have been
totally unconscious of the risk of such a thing, since
he always speaks of its author as a respectable local
antiquary, useful to Scott as a harmless drudge.
Perhaps Surtees was afraid of what he had done,
like that teller in the House of Commons who is
said by tradition to have attempted to make a bad
joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by
counting a fat man as ten, and, seeing that the
trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the measure,
became afraid to confess it.

The literary history of " The Death of Feather-
stonhaugh" naturally excited uneasiness about the
touching ballad of " Barthram's Dirge," also contrib-
uted to the Minstrelsy as the fruit of the indus-
trious investigations of Surtees. Most readers will
remember this : —

" They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
Beside the headless cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss. "

After this stanza, often admired for its clearness
as a picture, there is a judicious break, and then
come stanzas originally deficient of certain words,
which, as hypothetically supplied by Surtees, were
good-naturedly allowed to remain within brackets,
as ingenious suggestions : —

Some Book-Club Men. 305

' They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspine grey,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.

A lady came to that lonely bower,

And threw her robes aside ;
She tore her ling [long] yellow hair.

And knelt at Barthram's side.

She bathed him in the Lady Well,

His wounds sae deep and sair.
And she plaited a garland for his breast.

And a garland for his hair. "

A glance at the reprint of the Life of Surtees for
the book club called after his name, confirms the
suspicions raised by the exposure of the other ballad
— this also is an imposition.^

Altogether, such affairs create an unpleasant un-
certainty about the paternity of that delightful
department of literature, our ballad poetry. Where
next are we to be disenchanted? Of the way in
which ancient ballads have come into existence,
there is one sad example within my own knowledge.
Some mad young wags, wishing to test the critical
powers of an experienced collector, sent him a new-

1 The editor of the Life prints the following note by Mr Raine, the
coadjutor of Surtees in his investigations into the history of the North
of England : "I one evening in looking tlirough Scott's Minstrelsy
wrote opposite to this dirge, Aut Sobertus aut Diabolus. Surtees
called shortly after, and, pouncing upon the remark, justified me by
his conversation on the subject, in adding to my note, Ita, teste seipso."
—P. 87.

U

3o6 His Club.

made ballad, which they had been enabled to secure
only in a fragmentary form. To the surprise of its
fabricator, it was duly printed ; but what naturally
raised his surprise to astonishment, and revealed to
him a secret, was, that it was no longer a fragment,
but a complete ballad, — the collector, in the course
of his industrious inquiries among the peasantry,
having been so fortunate as to recover the missing
fragments ! It was a case where neither could say
anything to the other, though Cato might wonder
quod non rideret haruspex, haruspicem, cum vidisset.
This ballad has been printed in more than one col-
lection, and admired as an instance of the inimitable
simplicity of the genuine old versions !

It may perhaps do something to mitigate Surtees's
offence in the eye of the world, that it was he who
first suggested to Scott the idea of improving the
Jacobite insurrections, and, in fact, writing Waver-
ley. In the very same letter, quoted above, where
Scott acknowledges the treacherous gift, he also
acknowledges the hints he has received ; and, men-
tioning the Highland stories he had imbibed from
old Stewart of Invernahyle, says : " I believe there
never was a man who united the ardour of a soldier
and tale-teller — or man of talk, as they call it in
Gaelic— in such an excellent degree ; and as he was
as fond of telling as I was of hearing, I became a
violent Jacobite at the age of ten years old ; and
even since reason and reading came to my assist-

Some Book-Club Men. 307

ance, I have never got rid of the impression which
the gallantry of Prince Charles made on my imag-
ination. Certainly I will not renounce the idea of
doing something to preserve these stories, and the
memory of times and manners which, though exist-
ing as it were yesterday, have so strangely vanished
from our eyes."

So much for certain men of mark whose pur-
suits or hobbies induced them to cluster round the
cradle of this new literary organisation. When it
was full grown it gathered about it a large body
of systematic workers, who had their own special
departments in the great republic of letters. To
offer a just and discriminating account of these
men's services would draw me through an exten-
sive tract of literary biography.

There is a shallow prejudice very acceptable to
all blockheads, that men who are both learned and
laborious must necessarily be stupid. It is best to
meet the approach of such a prejudice at once, by
saying that the editors of club books are not mere
dreary drudges, seeing the works of others accur-
ately through the press, and attending only to dates
and headings. Around and throughout the large
library of volumes issued by these institutions, there
run prolific veins of fresh literature pregnant with
learning and ability. The style of work thus set
agoing has indeed just the other day been incor-
porated into a sort of department of state literature

3o8 His Club.

since the great collection called The Chronicles and
Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during
the Middle Ages, of which the Master of the Rolls
accepts the responsibility, is carried out in the very
spirit of the book clubs, in which indeed most of the
editors of the Chronicles have been trained.

Without prejudice to others, let me just name a
few of those to whom the world is under obligation
for services in this field of learned labour. For
England, there are James Orchard Halliwell, Sir
Frederic Madden, Beriah Botfield, Sir Henry Ellis,
Alexander Dyce, Thomas Stapleton, William J.
Thoms, Crofton Croker, Albert Way, Joseph Hun-
ter, John Bruce, Thomas Wright, John Gough
Nichols, Payne Collier, Joseph Stevenson, and
George Watson Taylor, who edited that curious
and melancholy book of poems, composed by the
Duke of Orleans while he was a prisoner in Eng-
land after the battle of Agincourt — poems com-
posed, singularly enough, in the English language,
and at a period extremely deficient in native ver-
nacular literature.

In Scotland, it was in the earlier issues of the
Bannatyne that Thomas Thomson, too indolent or
fastidious to commit himself to the writing of a
book, left the most accessible vestiges of that power
of practically grasping historical facts and condi-
tions, which Scott admired so greatly, and acknow-
ledged so much benefit from. He was followed by

Some Book-Club Men. , 309

Professor Innes, who found and taught the secret
of extracting from ecclesiastical chartularies, and
other early records, the light they throw upon the
social condition of their times, and thus collected
matter for the two pleasant volumes which have
become so popular. The Bannatyne Club, lately
finding no more to do, wound up with a graceful
compliment to David Laing — the man to whom,
after Scott, it has been most indebted. And, lastly,
it is in the Scotch book clubs that Joseph Robertson
has had the opportunity of exercising those subtle
powers of investigation and critical acumen, pecu-
liarly his own, which have had a perceptible and
substantial effect in raising archaeology out of that
quackish repute which it had long to endure under
the name of antiquarianism. For Ireland, of which
I have something farther to say at length, let it
suffice in the mean time to name Dean Butler, Dr
Reeves, Mr O'Donovan, Mr Eugene Curry, and
Dr Henthorn Todd.

There is another and distinct class of services
which have been performed through the medium
of the club books. The Roxburghe having been
founded on the principle that each member should
print a volume, to be distributed among his col-
leagues, an example was thus set to men of easy
fortune and scholarly tastes, which has been fol-
lowed with a large liberality, of which the public
have probably but a faint idea. Not only in those

3IO His Club.

clubs founded on the reciprocity system of each
member distributing and receiving, but in those to
be presently noticed, where the ordinary members
pay an annual sum, to be expended in the printing
of their books, have individual gentlemen come for-
ward and borne the expense of printing and distrib-
uting costly volumes. In some instances valuable
works have thus been presented to the members at
the cost of those who have also undergone the liter-
ary labour of editing them.

There is something extremely refined and gentle-
manlike in this form of liberality. The recipient of
the bounty becomes the possessor of a handsome
costly book without being subjected in any way to
the obligation of receiving a direct gift at the hands
of the munificent donor ; for the recipient is a sort
of corporation — a thing which the lawyers say has
no personal responsibility and no conscience, and
which all the world knows to have no gratitude.

PART IV.— BOOK-CLUB LITERATURE.

ffiETieraUttea.

I EARLY a quarter of a century after
the birth of the first book club,
a new era was ushered in by its
brother, the Camden, estabhshed
for the printing of books and docu-
ments connected with the early civil, ecclesiastical,
and literary history of the British Empire. It dis-
carded the rule which threw on each member the
duty of printing and distributing, a book, and tried
the more equitable adjustment of an annual sub-
scription to create a fund for defraying the expense
of printing volumes to be distributed among the
members. These, at first limited to looo, expanded
to 1 200. Clubs with various objects now thickly
followed. Any attempt to classify them as a whole,
is apt to resemble Whately's illustration of illogical

312 Book- Club Literature.

division — "e.g., if you were to divide 'book' into
'poetical, historical, folio, quarto, French, Latin,'"
&c. One of the systems of arrangement is topo-
graphical, as the Chetham, " for the purpose of
publishing biographical and historical books con-
nected with the counties palatine of Lancaster and
Chester."^ The Surtees, again, named after our
friend the ballad-monger, affects "those parts of
England and Scotland included in the east between
the Humber and the Firth of Forth, and in the west
between the Mersey and the Clyde — a region which
constituted the ancient kingdom of Northumber-
land." The Maitland, with its headquarters in
Glasgow, gives a preference to the west of Scot-
land, but^ has not been exclusive. The Spalding
Club, established in Aberdeen, the granite capital
of the far north, is the luminary of its own district,
and has produced fully as much valuable historical
matter as any other club in Britain. Then there
is the Irish Archaeological — perhaps the most
learned of all — with its casual assistants, the Ossi-
anic, the Celtic, and the lona. The ^Slfric may
be counted their ethnical rival, as dealing with the
productions of the Anglo-Saxon enemies of the
Celt. The Camden professes, as we have seen, to
be general to the British Empire. The name of

^ Among other volumes of interest, the Chetham has issued a very
valuable and amusing collection of documents about the siege of
Preston, and other incidents of the insurrection of 1715 in Lancashire.

Generalities. 313

the club called "The Oriental Translation Fund,"
tells its own story.

There are others, too, with no topographical con-
nection, which express pretty well their purpose in
their names — as the Shakespeare, for the old drama
— the Percy, for old ballads and lyrical pieces. The
Hakluyt has a delightful field — old voyages and
travels. The Ray Society sticks to zoology and
botany ; and the Wernerian, the Cavendish, and
the Sydenham, take the other departments in
science, which the names given to them readily
indicate.

In divinity and ecclesiastical history we have the
Parker Society, named after the archbishop. Its
tendencies are " Low," or, at all events, " Broad ; "
and as it counted some seven thousand members,
it could not be allowed the run of the public mind
without an antidote being accessible. Hence " The ^
Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology," the tendency
of which was not only shown in its name, but in
its possessing among its earliest adherents the Rev.
E. B. Pusey and the Rev. John Keble. The same
party strengthened themselves by a series of vol-
umes called the "Library of the Fathers of the
Holy Catholic Church anterior to the Division of
the East and West, translated by Members of the
English Church." In Scotland, the two branches
which deny the supremacy of Rome (it would give
offence to call them both Protestant) are well rep-

314 Book- Club Literature.

resented by the Spottiswoode, already referred to
as the organ of Episcopacy ; and the more prolific
Wodrow, which, named after the zealous historian
of the Troubles, was devoted to the history of Pres-
byterianism, and the works of the Presbyterian
fathers.

Thus are the book clubs eminently the republic
of letters, in which no party or class has an absolute
predominance, but each enjoys a fair hearing. And
whereas if we saw people for other purposes than
literature combining together according to eccle-
siastical divisions, as High Church or Low, Episco-
palian or Presbyterian, we should probably find that
each excluded from its circle all that do not spiritu-
ally belong to it, we are assured it is quite other-
wise in the book clubs— that High Churchmen or
Romanists have not been excluded from the Parker,
or Evangelical divines prohibited from investing in
the Library of Anglo-Catholic Theology. Nay, the
most zealous would incline to encourage the com-
munication of their own peculiar literary treasures
to their avowed theological opponents, as being
likely to soften their hearts, and turn them towards
the truth. Some adherents of these theological
clubs there also are of slightly latitudinarian pro-
pensities, to whom the aspirations of honest re-
ligious zeal, and the records of endurance and mar-
tyrdom for conscience' sake, can never be void of
interest, or fail in summoning up feelings of re-

Generalities. 315

spectful sympathy, whatever be the denominational
banner under which they have been exhibited.
Some of these clubs now rest from their labours,
the literary strata in which they were employed
having been in fact worked out. Whether dead or
living, however, their books are now a considerable
and varied intellectual garden, in which the literary
busy bee may gather honey all the day and many
a day.

It will be readily supposed from the different and
utterly separate grooves in which they run, and is
very well known to the prowler among club books,
that although these volumes profess to be printed
from old manuscripts, or to be mere reprints of rare
books, they take a considerable portion of their tone
and tendency from the editor. In fact, the editor
of a club book is, in the general case, a sort of
literary sportsman, who professes to follow entirely
his own humour or caprice, or, say, his own taste
and enjoyment, in the matter which he selects, and
the manner in which he lays it before his friends.
Hence, many of these volumes, heavy and unim-
pressible as they look, yet are stamped strongly with
the marks of the individuality, or of the peculiar
intellectual cast, of living men. Take down, for
instance, the volume of the Camden called "De
Antiquis Legibus Liber," otherwise, "Cronica Ma-
jorum et Vicecomitum Londoniarum," printed from
" a small folio, nine inches and a half in length

3i6 Book-Club Literature.

and seven inches in breadth, the binding of white
leather covering wooden backs, and containing 159
leaves of parchment, paged continuously with Arabic
cyphers." It is partly a record of the old municipal
laws of the city of London, partly a chronicle of
events. Had it fallen to be edited by a philoso-
phical inquirer into the origin and principles of
jurisprudence, or an investigator of the rise and
progress of cities, or a social philosopher of any
kind, it is hard to say what might have been made
of it — easy to say that it would have been made
something very different from what it is. The
editor was an illustrious genealogist. Accordingly,
early in his career as expositor of the character of
the volume, he alights upon a proper name, not
entirely isolated, but capable of being associated
with other names. Thus, he is placed on a groove,
and off he goes travelling in the fashion following
over 220 pages of printed quarto : " Henry de
Cornhill, husband of Alice de Courcy, the heiress
of the Barony of Stoke Courcy Com. Somerset, and
who, after his decease, re - married Warine Fitz-
Gerald the king's chamberlain, leaving by each an
only daughter, co-heirs of this Barony, of whom
Joan de Cornhill was the wife of Hugh de Neville,
Proto Forester of England, wife first of Baldwine
de Riviers, eldest son and heir-apparent of William
de Vernon, Earl of Devon, deceased in his father's
lifetime ; and, secondly, of the well-known favourite

Generalities. 3 1 7

of King John, Fulk de Breaute, who had name
from a commune of the Canton of Goderville, ar-
rondissement of Le Havre, department of La Seine
Inf^rieure, rendered accompt of this his debt in the
same roll ; " and so on over the remainder of the 220
pages. If you turn over a few of them you will
find the same sort of thing : " Agnes, the first
daughter, was married to William de Vesey, of
whom John de Vesey, issueless, and William de
Vesey, who had issue, John de Vesey, who died
before his father ; and afterwards the said William
de Vesey, the father, without heir of his body ; "
and so on.

The reader whose fortune it has been to pass a
portion of his early days among venerable Scottish
gentlewomen of the old school, will perhaps experi-
ence an uneasy consciousness of having encountered
matter of this description before. It may recall to
him misty recollections of communications which fol-
lowed a course something like this : " And so ye see,
auld Pittoddles, when his third wife deed, he got
married upon the laird o' Blaithershin's aughteenth
daughter, that was sister to Jemima, that was mar-
ried intil Tam Flumexer, that was first and second
cousin to the Pittoddleses, whase brither became
laird afterwards, and married Blaithershin's Baubie —
and that way Jemima became in a kind o' way her
ain niece and her aiii aunty, an' as we used to say,
her gude-brither was married to his ain grannie."

3i8 Book-Club Literature.

But there is the deep and the shallow in geneal-
ogy, as in other arts and sciences, and, incoherent
as it may sound to the uninitiated, the introduction
to the Liber de Antiquis Legibus is no old woman's
work, but full of science and strange matter.^ It
all grows, however, in genealogical trees, these being
the predominant intellectual growth in the editor's
mind. In fact, your thorough genealogist is quite a
peculiar intellectual phenomenon. He is led on by
a special and irresistible internal influence or genius.
If he should for some time endeavour to strive after
a more cosmopolite intellectual vitality, the ruling
spirit conquers all other pursuits. The organism of
the tree resumes its predominance, and if he have
healthy sturdy brains, whatever other matter they
may have collected is betimes dragged into the
growth, and absorbed in the vitality of the majestic
bole and huge branches. There is perhaps no pur-
suit more thoroughly absorbing. The reason is this :
No man having yet made out for himself an articu-
late pedigree from Adam — Sir Thomas Urquhart, the

^ I remember hearing of an instance at u jury trial in Scotland,
where counsel had an extremely subtle point of genealogy to make
out, and no one but a ploughman witness, totally destitute of the
genealogical faculty, to assist him to it. His plan — and probably a
very judicious one in the general case — was to get the witness on a
table-land of broad unmistakable principle, and then by degrees lure
him farther on. Thus he got the witness readily to admit that his
own mother was older than himself, but no exertion of ingenuity
could get his intellect a step beyond that broad admission.

Generalities. 319

translator of Rabelais, to be sure, made one for him-
self, but he had his tongue in his cheek all the while
— no clear pedigree going back to the first of men,
every one, whether short or long, Celtic or Saxon,
comes into the clouds at last. It is when a pedigree
approaches extinction that the occasion opens for
the genealogist to exercise his subtlety and skill,
and his exertions become all the more zealous and
exciting that he knows he must be baffled some-
where. The pursuit is described as possessing some-
thing like the same absorbing influence which is
exercised over certain minds by the higher mathe-
matics. The devotees get to think that all human
knowledge centres in their peculiar science and the
cognate mysteries and exquisite scientific manipula-
tions of heraldry, and they may be heard talking
with compassionate contempt of some one so grossly
ignorant as not to know a bar-dexter from a bend-
sinister, or who asks what is meant by a cross potent
quadrate party per pale.

These are generally great readers — reading is ab-
solutely necessary for their pursuit ; but they have
a faculty of going over literary ground, picking up
the proper names, and carrying them away, uncon-
scious of anything else, as pointers go over stubble
fields and raise the partridges, without taking any
heed of the valuable examples of cryptogamic botany
or palaeozoic entomology they may have trodden
over. A certain writer on logic and metaphysics

320 Book-Club Literature.

was once as much astonished as gratified by an
eminent genealogical antiquary's expression of in-
terest in a discovery which his last book contained.
The philosopher thought his views on the sub-
jectivity of the nominalists and the objectivity of
the realists had at last been appreciated ; but the
discovery was merely this, that the name of a person
who, according to the previously imperfect science
of the genealogist, ought not to have existed then
and there, was referred to in a letter from Spinoza,
cited in defence of certain views upon the absolute.

The votaries of this pursuit become powers in the
world of rank and birth, from the influence they
are able to bring upon questions of succession and
inheritance. Hence they are, like all great influ-
ences, courted and feared. Their ministry is often
desired and sometimes necessary; but if is received
with misgiving and awe, since, like the demons of
old summoned by incantation, they may destroy the
audacious mortal who demands their services. The
most sagacious and sceptical men are apt to be
mildly susceptible to conviction in the matter of
their own pedigrees, and, a little conscious of their
weakness, they shrink from letting the sacred tree
be handled by relentless and unsympathising adepts.
One of these intellectual tyrants, a man of great
ability, when he quarrelled with any one, used to
threaten to "bastardise" him, or to find the bend-
sinister somewhere in his ancestry ; and his experi-

Generalities. 321

ence in long genealogies made him feel assured, in
the general case, of finding what he sought if he
went far enough back for it.

The next volume you, lay hand on is manifestly
edited by an Ecclesiologist, or a votary of that recent
addition to the constituted "ologies," which has come
into existence as the joint offspring of the revival
of Gothic architecture and the study of primitive-
church theology. Through this dim religious light
he views all the things in heaven and earth that
are dealt with in his philosophy. His notes are
profusely decorated with a rich array of rood screens,
finial crockets, lavatories, aumbries, lecterns, lych
sheds, albs, stoups, sedilia, credence tables, pixes,
hagioscopes, baudekyns, , and squenches. It is evi-
dent that he keeps a Bestiaryj. or record of his
experiences in bestiology, otherwise called bestial
eikonography ; and if he be > requested to give a
more explicit definition, of the article, he will per-
haps inform you that it is a record of the types of
the, ecclesiological symbolisation of beasts. If you
prevail on him to exhibit to you this solemn record,
which he will open with befitting reverence, the
faintest suspicion of a smile curling on your lip will
suffuse him with a lively sorrow for your lost con-
dition, mijfed with righteous r indignation towards
the irreverent folly whereof you have been guilty.
He finds a great deal beyond sermons in stones,
and can point out to you a certain piece of rather

X

32 2 Book-Club Literature.

confused - looking architecture, which he terms a
symbolical epitome of all knowledge, human and
divine — an eikonographic encyclopaedia.

If you desire an antidote to all this, you may
find it in the editor in true blue who so largely refers
to the Book of the Universal Kirk, The Hynd Let
Loose, The Cloud of Witnesses, Naphtali, and Faith-
ful Witness- Bearing Exemplified, and is great in
his observations on the Auchinshauch Testimony,
the Sanquhar Declaration, and that fine amalgama-
tion of humility and dogmatism, the Informatory
Vindication.^

There is no occasion for quarrelling with these
specialties. They are typical of a zeal often prolific
both in amusement and instruction ; and when a
man has gone through the labour of rendering many
hundreds of pages from a crabbed old manuscript,
or of translating as much from a nearly unknown
tongue, it would be hard to deny him the recreation
of a few capers on his own hobby. Keep in mind
that everything of this kind is outside the substance
of the book. The editor has his swing in the intro-
duction and appendix, and the notes ; perhaps also
in the title and index, if he can make anything of
them. But it is a principle of honour throughout
the clubs that the purity of the text shall not be

1 "An Informatory yindication of a poor, wasted, misrepresented
remnant of the suffering anti-popish, anti-prelatic, anti-erastian, anti-
sectarian, only true church of Christ in Scotland."

Generalities. 323

tampered with ; and so, whether dark or light, faint
or strong, it is a true impression of the tinmes, as
the reader will perhaps find in the few specimens
I propose to show him. As touching the literary
value of what is thus restored, there are some who
will say, and get applause for doing so, that there
are too many bad or second-rate books in existence
already ; that every work of great genius finds its
way to the world at once ; and that the very fact of
its long obscurity proves a piece of literature to be
of little value. For all this, and all that can be
added to it, there are those who love these recovered
relics of ancestral literature, and are prepared to
give reasons for their attachment. In the first place,
and apart from their purely literary merits, they
are records of the intellect and manners of their age.
Whoever desires to be really acquainted with the
condition of a nation at any particular time — say
with that of England during Elizabeth's reign, or
the Commonwealth — will not attain his object by
merely reading the most approved histories of the
period. He must endeavour as far as he can to live
back into the times, and to do this most effectually
he had better saturate himself to the utmost with
its fugitive literature, reading every scrap he may
lay hand on until he can find no more.

Looking at these relics, on the other hand, as
pure literature, no doubt what is recalled out of the
past loses the freshness and the fitness to surround-

324 Book-Club Literature.

ing conditions which gave it pungency and emphasis
in its own day, while it has not that hold on our
sympathies and attachment possessed by the house-
hold literature which generation after generation
has been educated to admire, and which, indeed,
has made itself a part of our method of thought
and our form of language. But precisely because
it wants this qualification has resuscitated literature
a peculiar value of its own. It breaks in with a
new light upon the intellect of the day, and its
conventional forms and colours. There is not in
the intellectual history of mankind any so effective
and' brilliant an awakening as the resuscitation of
classical literature. It was not one solitary star
arising after another at long intervals and far apart
in space, but a sudden blazing forth of a whole
firmament of light. But that is a phenomenon to
all appearance not to be repeated, or, more correctly
speaking, not to be completed, since it broke up
unfinished, leaving the world in partial darkness.
Literature has been ever since wailing the loss of
the seventy per cent of Livy's History, of the eighty
per cent of Tacitus and of Euripides, of the still
larger' proportion of ^schylus and Sophocles,- of the
mysterious triumphs of Menander, and of the whole
apparatus of the literairy renown of Varro and of
Atticlis.^ What would the learned world give for

* The applicability of this to Varro has been questioned. It is a
matter in which every brie iS entitled to hold his own opinion. - To

Generalities. 325

the restoration of these thjngs? It may safely offer
an indefinite reward, for so well has its surface been
ransacked for them that their existence is hardly
possible, though some sanguine people enjoy the
expectation of finding them in some obscure back-
shelves in the Sultan's library. The literary results
of the costly and skilful scientific process for restor-
ing the baked books found in Herculaneum were so
appallingly paltry, as to discourage the pursuit of
the lost classics. The best thing brought to light

say nothing of the other extant shreds of his writings — and I never
found any one who had anything to say for them — I cannot account
even the De Re Riistica as much higher in literary, rank than a
Farmers' and Gardeners' Calendar. No doubt it is valuable, as any
such means of insight into the practical life of the Egyptians or the
Phrenicians would be,' eveil were it leSs methodical than what we
have from Varro. But this," or other writing like it, will hardly ac-
count for his great fame among' contemporaries. Look, for instance,
to Cicero at the outset of the Academics: "Tu ^tatem patriae, tu
descriptiones lempormri, tu sacrorum jura, tu sacerdotum munera, tu
domesticam, tu bellicam disciplinam, tu sedem regionum et locorum,
tu omnium divinarum humanarumque rerum nomina, genera officia,
causas aperuiste : plurimuraque poetis nostris omninoque latinis, et
Uteris luniinis attulisti, et verbis : atque ipse varium et elegans omni
fere numero poema fecisti, : philosophiamque multis locis inchoasti —
ad impellenduin satis, ad edocendum parum. " Laudation ' could
scarcely be pitched in higher tone , towards the works of the great
Youatt, or Mr Huxtable's contributions to the department .of litera-
ture devoted to manure and pigs. The De Re Rustica, written when
its author was eighty years old, seems to. have* been about- the last of
what he ca>lls his seven times seventy works, and it is natural to sup-
pose that somewhere in the remaining four hundred and eighty-nine lay
the merits which excited such encomiums. The story about Gregory
the Great suppressing the best of Varro's works to hide St Augus-
tine's pilferings from them, would be a valuable curiosity of literature
if it could be established. "'

326 Book- Club Literature.

during the present century, indeed, is that Institute
of Gains which cost Angelo Mai such a world of
trouble, and was the glory and boast of his life ; but
it is not a very popular or extensively read book
after all. The manuscripts that have been extracted
from the dirty greedy fingers of the Armenian and
Abyssinian monks, are the most valuable pieces of
literature that have been rescued from the far past.
Important light on the early history of Eastern
Christianity will no doubt be extracted from them ;
but they are written in those Oriental tongues which
are available only to the privileged few.

Unlikely as the treasures opened by the revival
of classic literature are to be to any extent in-
creased, let us not despise the harvest of our own
home gleaners. They do not find now and then
a buried Hamlet, or Paradise Lost, or Hudibras —
though, by the way, the Poetical Remains of Butler,
which in wit and sarcasm are second only to his
great work, were rescued from oblivion by the
drudging antiquary Thyer, who was so conceited
of the performance that he had the portrait of his
own respectable and stupid face engraved beside
that of Butler, in order perhaps that all men might
see how incapable he was of fabricating the pieces
to which it is prefixed. There is a good deal of
the poetry of the club books of which it may at
least be said, that worse is printed and praised as
the produce of our contemporaries.

Generalities. 327

It is not so much, however, in Poetry or the
Drama as in Historical literature that the clubs
develop their strength. It is difficult to estimate
the greatness of the obligations of British history
to these institutions. They have dug up, cleansed,
and put in order for immediate inspection and use,
a multitude of written monuments bearing on the
greatest events and the most critical epochs in the
progress of the empire. The time thus saved to
investigators is great and priceless. In no other de-
partment of knowledge can the intellectual labourer
more forcibly apply the Latin proverb which warns
him that his work is indefinite, but his life brief In
the ordinary sciences the philosopher may and often
does content himself with the well-rounded and pro-
fessedly completed system of the day. But no one
can grapple with history without feeling its inex-
haustibleness. Its final boundaries seem only to
retreat to a farther distance the more ground we
master, as Mr Buckle found, when he betook him-
self, like another Atlas, to grapple with the history
of the whole world.

The more an investigator finds his materials
printed for him, the farther he can go. No doubt
it is sometimes desirable, even necessary, to look
to some manuscript authority for the clearing -up
of a special point; but too often the profession of
having perused a great mass of manuscript author-
ities is an affectation and a pedantry. He who

328 Book-Club Literature.

searches for and finds the truth in any considerable
portion of history, performs too great an achieve-
ment to care for the praise of deciphering a few
specimens of difficult handwriting, and revealing the
sense hidden in certain words couched in obsolete
spelling. If casual discoveries of this kind do really
help him to great truths, it is well ; but it too often
happens that he exaggerates their value, because
they are his own game, shot on his own manor.
Until he has exhausted all that is in print, the
student of history wastes his time in struggling with
manuscripts. Hence the value of the services of
the book clubs in immensely widening the arena
of his immediate materials. To him their volumes
are as new tools to the mechanic, or new machinery
to the manufacturer. They economise, as it is
termed, his labour : more correctly speaking, they
increase its productiveness.

These books are fortunately rich in memorials of
the great internal contest of the seventeenth cen-
tury. The notes, for instance, of the proceedings
of the Long Parliament, by Sir Ralph Verney,
edited for the Camden by Mr Bruce, come upon
us fresh from that scene of high debate, carrying
with them the very marks of strife. The editor
informs us that the manuscript is written almost
entirely in pencil on slips of foolscap paper, which
seem to have been so folded as to be conveniently
placed on the knee, and transferred to the pocket

Generalities. 329

as each was completed. " They are," he says, " full
of abrupt terminations, as if the writer occasionally
gave up the task of following a rapid^ speaker who
had got beyond him, and began his note afresh.
When they relate to resolutions of the House, they
often contain erasures, alterations, or other marks
of the haste with which the notes were jotted down,
and of the changes which took place in the subject-
matter during the progress towards cornpletion. On
several important occasions, and especially in the
instance of the debate on the Protestation [as to
the impeachment of Strafford], the confusion and ir-
regularity of the notes give evidence to the excite-
ment of the House; and when the public discord
rose higher, the notes become more brief and less
personal, and speeches are less frequently assigned
to their speakers, either from greater difficulty in
reporting, or from an increased feeling of the danger
of the time, and the possible use that might be
made of notes of violent remarks. On several of
the sheets there are marks evidently made by the
writer's pencil having been forced upwards sud-
denly, as if by some one, in a full House, pressing
hastily against his elbow while he was in the act of
taking his note."

330 Book-Club Literature.

Sojfti Spattimg.

|OOKING from the opposite end of the
island, and from a totally different
social position, another watchful obser-
ver recorded the events of the great
contest. This was John Spalding, commonly sup-
posed to have been Commissary-Clerk of Aberdeen,
but positively known in no other capacity than as
author of the book aptly entitled The Troubles,
or, more fully, " Memorials of the Troubles in Scot-
land and in England," from 1624 to 1645. Little,
probably, did the Commissary-Clerk imagine, when
he entered on his snug quiet office, where he re-
corded probates of wills and the proceedings in
questions of marriage law, that he was to witness
and record one of the most momentous conflicts
that the world ever beheld — that contest which has
been the prototype of all later European convul-
sions. Less still could he have imagined that fame
would arise for him after two hundred years — that
vehement though vain efforts should be made to
endow the simple name of John Spalding with the
antecedents and subsequents of a biographical ex-
istence, and that the far-off descendants of many
of those lairds and barons, whose warlike deeds he
noticed at humble distance, should raise a monument

yohn Spalding. 331

to his memory in an institution called by his name.
He was evidently a thoroughly retiring man, for he
has left no vestige whatever of his individuality.
Some specimens of his formal official work might
have been found in the archives of his ofifice — these
would have been especially valuable for the identi-
fication of his handwriting and the settlement of
disputed questions about the originality of manu-
scripts ; but these documents, as it happens, were
all burnt early in last century with the building
containing them. So ardent and hot has been the
chase after vestiges of this man, that the fact was
once discovered that with his own hand he had
written a certain deed concerning a feu -duty or
rent-charge of ^^25, 7s. 4d., bearing date 31st Jan-
uary 1663 ; but in spite of the most resolute efforts,
this interesting document has not been found.

It is probably to this same unobtrusive reserve,
which has shrouded his very identity, that we owe
the valuable peculiarities of the Commissary-Clerk's
chronicle. He sought no public distinctions, took
no ostensible side, and must have kept his own
thoughts to himself, otherwise he would have had
to bear record of his own share of troubles. In this
calm serenity — folding the arms of resignation on
the bosom of patience, as the Persians say — he took
ills notes of the wild contest that raged around him,
setting down each event, great or small, with sys-
tematic deliberation, as if he were an experimental

332 Book- Club Literature.

philosopher watching the phenomena of an eclipse
or an eruption. Hence nowhere, perhaps, has it
been permitted to a mere reader to have so good a
peep behind the scenes of the mighty drama of war.
We have plenty of chroniclers of that epoch —
marching us with swinging historic stride on from
battle unto battle — great in describing in long
sentences the musterings, the conflicts, and the re-
treats. In Spalding, however, we shall find the
numbers and character of the combatants, their
arms, their dresses, the persons who paid for these,
and the prices paid — the amount they obtained in
pay, and the amount they were cheated out of —
their banners, distinguishing badges, watchwords,
and all other like particulars, set down with the
minuteness of a bailiff making an inventory of
goods on which he has taken execution. He is
very specific in what one may term the negative
side of the characteristics of war — the misery and
desolation it spreads around. The losses of this
" gudeman " and that lone widow are stated as if
he were their law agent, making up an account to
go to a jury for damages for the " spulzie of outside
and inside plenishing, nolt, horse, sheep, cocks and
hens, hay, corn, peats, and fodder." He specifies
all the items of mansions and farm-houses attacked
and looted, or "harried," as he calls it — the doors
staved in, the wainscoting pulled down — the win-
dows smashed^— the furniture made firewood of —

yohn Spalding. 333

the pleasant plantations cut down to build sleeping-
huts — the linen, plate, and other valuables carried
off: he will even, perchance, tell how they were
distributed — who it was that managed to feather
his nest with the plunder, and who it was that was
disappointed and cheated.

He had opportunities of bestowing his descriptive
powers to good purpose. Besides its ordinary share
in the vicissitudes and calamities of the war, his
town of Aberdeen was twice pillaged by Montrose,
with laudable impartiality — once for the Cove-
nanters and once for the Royalists. Here is his
first triumphant entry: —

" Upon the morne, being Saturday, they came in
order of battle, being well armed both on horse and
foot, ilk horseman having five shot at the least,
whereof he had ane carbine in his hand, two pistols
by his sides, and other two at his saddle-torr ; the
pikemen in their ranks with pike and sword ; the
musketeers in their ranks with musket, musket-
staff, bandelier, sword, powder, ball, and match.
Ilk company, both horse and foot, had their cap-
tains, ' lieutenants, ensigns, sergeants, and other
officers and commanders, all for the most part in
buff coats and goodly order. They had five colours
or ensigns, whereof the Earl of Morltrose had one
having his motto drawn in letters, 'For .Religion,
the Covenant, and the Countrie.' ' The Earl Mare-
chal had one, the Earl of Kinghorn had one, and

334 Book-Club Literature.

the town of Dundee had two. They had trum-
peters to ilk company of horsemen, and drummers
to ilk company of footmen. They had their meat,
drink, and other provisions, bag and baggage, car-
ried with them, done all by advice of his Excellency
Field-Marshal Leslie, whose counsel General Mon-
trose followed in this business. Then, in seemly
order and good array, this army came forward and
entered the burgh of Aberdeen about ten hours in
the morning, at the Over Kirk gateport, syne came
down through the Broadgate, through the Castle-
gate, over at the Justice Port to the Queen's Links
directly. Here it is to be noted that few or none
of this haill army wanted ane blue ribbon hung
about his craig [viz., neck] under his left arm, whilk
they called ' the Covenanters' ribbon,' because the
Lord Gordon and some other of the Marquis's
bairns had ane ribbon, when he was dwelling in
the toun, of ane red flesh colour, which they wore
in their hats, and called it 'the royal ribbon,' as a
sign of their love and loyalty to the King. In
dispite or dirision whereof this blue ribbon was
worn and called 'the Covenanters' ribbon' by the
haill soldiers of this army."

The well-ordered army passed through, levying
a fine on the Malignants, and all seemed well ; but
because the citizens had not resisted Montrose, the
loyal barons in the neighbourhood fell on them and
plundered them ; and because they had submitted

John Spalding. 335

to be so plundered, the Covenanting army came
back and plundered them also. "Many of this
company went and brack up the Bishop's yetts, set
on good fires of his peats standing within the close :
they masterfully broke up the haill doors and win-
dows of this stately house ; they brake down beds,
boards, aumries, glassen windows, took out the iron
stauncheons, brake in the locks, and such as they
could carry had with them, and sold for little or
nothing ; but they got none of the Bishop's plenish-
ing to speak of, because it was all conveyed away
before their coming." On Sunday, Montrose and
the other leaders duly attended the devotional ser-
vices of the eminent Covenanting divines they had
brought with them. "But," says Spalding, "the
renegate soldiers, in time of both preachings, is
abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully,
without regard to God or man ; " and he goes on
in his specific way, describing the plundering until
he reaches this climax : " No foul — cock or hen —
left unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messens, and
whelps within Aberdeen felled and slain upon the
gate, so that neither hound nor messen or other
dog was left that they could see." . But there was
a special reason for this. The ladies of Aberdeen,
on the retiring of Montrose's army, had decorated
all the vagabond street-dogs with the blue ribbon
of the Covenant

This was in 1639. Five years afterwards Mon-

33^ Book- Club Literature.

trose came back on them in more terrible guise still,
to punish the town for having yielded to the Cove-
nant. In Aberdeen, Cavalier principles generally-
predominated ; but after bejng overrun and plun-
dered successively by either party, the Covenanters,
having the acting government of the country at
their back, succeeded in establishing a predom-
inance in the councils of the exhausted community.
Spalding had no respect for the civic and rural
forces they attempted to embody, and speaks of a
petty bailie " who brought in ane drill - master to
learn our poor bodies to handle their arms; who
had more need to handle the plough and win their
livings." Montrose had now with him his cele-
brated army of Highlanders — or Irish, as Spalding
calls them — who broke at a rush through the feeble
force sent out of the town to meet them. Montrose
"follows the chase to Aberdeen, his men hewing
and cutting down all manner of men they could
overtake within the town, :upon the streets, or in
their houses, and round about the town, as our men
were fleieing, with broadswords, but mercy or remeid.
These cruel Irish, seeing a man well clad, would first
tyr \i.e., strip] hifn and' save, the clothes ,unspoiled,
then kill the man ; . . . nothing heard but pitiful
howling, crying, weeping, mourning, through all the
streets. , . . It is lamentable to hear how thir
Irishes, who had gotten the spoil of the town, did
abuse thesamin. The men that they killed they

John Spalding. 337

would not suffer to be buried, but tirled them of
their clothes, syne left their naked bodies lying
above the ground. The wife durst not cry nor
weep at her husband's slaughter before her eyes,
nor the mother for her son — which if they were
heard, then they were presently slain also ; . . .
and none durst bury the dead. Yea, and I saw
two corpses carried to the burial through the old
town with women only, and not ane man amongst
them, so that the naked corpses lay unburied
so long as these limmers were ungone to the
camp."

The Commissary-Clerk was on Montrose's side,
but he had the hatred of a Lowlander of that day
for the Highlanders. He has a great many amus-
ing episodes describing the light-fingered lads from
the hills coming down, and in the general confusion
of the times plundering Cavalier and Covenanter
alike ; and on these occasions he drops his usual
placidity and becomes rabid and abusive, as the
best-tempered Americans are said to become when
they speak of niggers, and deals out to them the
terms limmers, thieves, robbers, cut-throats, master-
ful vagrants, and so forth, with great volubility. Of
some of their chiefs, renowned in history, he speaks
as mere robber-leaders, and when they are known
by one name in their own country and another in
the Lowlands, he puts an alias between the two.
The very initial words of his chronicle are, " Efter

Y

338 Book-Club Literature.

the death and burial of Angus Macintosh of Auld-
terlie, alias Angus Williamson."

Montrose having departed, Argyle's troops com-
menced to plunder the district for having submitted
to his enemy, and these, being doubly offensive as
Covenanters and Highlanders, are treated accord-
ingly. But it is necessary to be impartial ; and
having bestowed so much on the Cavalier annalist,
let us take a glimpse at the other side.

fiROM the collections of the Reverend
Robert Wodrow, the historian of The
Sufferings of the Church of Scotland,
a rich harvest has- been reaped by the
northern clubs, one of which appropriately adopted
his name. He was a voluminous writer and an
inexhaustible collector. It is generally classed
among the failings of the book -hunter that he
looks only to the far past, and disregards the con-
temporary and the recent. Wodrow was a valu-
able exception to this propensity. Reversing the
spirit of the selfish bull which asks what posterity
has done for us, he stored up contemporary litera-
ture for subsequent generations ; and he thus left,
at the commencement of the eighteenth century,
such a library as a collector of the nineteenth.

Robert Wodrow, 339

could he have sent a caterer before him, would
have prepared to await his arrival in the world.
The inestimable value of the great collection of the
civil-war pamphlets made by George Thomason,
and fortunately preserved in the British Museum,
is very well known. Just such another of its kind
is Wodrow's, made up of the pamphlets, broadsides,
pasquinades, and other fugitive pieces of his own
day, and of the generation immediately preceding.
These are things easily obtained in their freshness,
but the term fugitive is too . expressive of their
nature, and, after a generation or two they have
all flown away, save those which the book-hunter
has exorcised into the vaults of some public col-
lection. There is perhaps too little done in our
own day in preserving for posterity these mute
witnesses of our sayings and doings. They are
too light and volatile to be caught by the Copy-
right Act, which so carefully deposits our quartos
and octavos in the privileged libraries. It is pleas-
ant, by the way, at this moment, to observe that
the eminent scholar who has charge of the chief
portion of Wodrow's gatherings, as keeper of the
Advocates' Library, is following his example, by
preserving a collectijon of the pamphlets of the
present century which will keep our posterity in
employment, if they desire to unwind the intri-
cacies of all our civil and ecclesiastical sayings and
doings.

340 Book-Club Literature.

Wodrow carried on an active correspondence
about matters of contemporary policy, and the
special inquiries connected with his History : selec-
tions from this mass have furnished three sturdy
volumes. Besides pamphlets, he scraped together
quantities of other people's manuscripts — some of
them rising high enough in importance to be
counted State papers. How the minister of the
quiet rural parish of Eastwood could have got his
hands on them is a marvel, but it is fortunate that
they were saved from destruction ; and it is nearly
equally fortunate that they have been well ran-
sacked by zealous club-book makers, who have by
this time probably exhausted the better part of
their material. In the next place, Wodrow left
behind several biographies of eminent members of
his own Church, its saints and martyrs ; and
goodly masses out of this storehouse have also
been printed.

But by far the most luxurious morsel in the
worthy man's intellectual larder was not intended
to reach the profane vulgar, but destined for his
own special rumination. It consists in the veritable
contents of his private note-books, containing his
communings with his own heart and his imagina-
tion. They were written on small slips of paper,
in a hand direly cramped and nlinute ; and lest
this should not be a sufficient protection to their
privacy, a portion was committed to certain ciphers.

Robert Wodrow. 341

which their ingenious inventor deemed, no doubt, to
be utterly impregnable. In stenography, however,
the art of lock-rpicking always keeps ahead of the
art of locking, as that of inventing destructive
missiles seems to outstrip that of forging impene-
trable plates. Wodrow's trick was the same as
that of Samuel Pepys, and productive of the same
consequences — the excitement of a rabid curiosity,
which at last found its way into the recesses of his
secret communings. They are now printed, in the
fine type of the Maitland Club, in four portly
quartos, under the title, Wodrow's Analecta. Few
books would hold out so much temptation to a
commentator, but their editor is dumb, faithfully
reprinting the whole, page by page, and abstaining
both from introduction and explanatory foot-note.

Perhaps in the circumstances this was a prudent
measure. Those who enjoy the weaknesses of the
enthusiastic historian have them at full length. As
to others partially like-minded with him, but more
worldly, who would rather that such a tissue of
absurdities had not been revealed, they are bound
over to silence, seeing that a word said against the
book is a word of reproach against its idolised
author — :for as to the editor, he may repeat after
Macbeth, " Thou canst not say I did it."

Mr Buckle's ravenous researches into the most
distant recesses of literature revealed to him this
pose. He has taken some curious specimens out

342 Book-Club Literature.

of it, but he might have made his anthology still
richer had he been in search of the picturesque and
ludicrous, instead of seeking solid support for his
great theory of positivism. What he chiefly amuses
one with in this part of the world, however, is the
solemn manner in which he treats the responsibility
of giving increased publicity to such things, and
invokes the Deity to witness that his objects are
sincere, and he is influenced by no irreverence.
This feeling may arise: from a very creditable source,
but a native of Scotland has difficulty in under-
standing it. In this country, being, as many of us
have been, within the very skirts of the great con-
tests that have shaken the realm — Jacobitism on
the one hand and Covenantism on the other — we
are roughened and hardened, and what shocks our
sensitive neighbours is very good fun to ourselves.

It appears that Wodrow had intended to publish
a book on remarkable special providences — some-
thing of a scientific character it was to be, contain-
ing a classification of their phenomena, perhaps a
theory of their connection with revealed religion.
The natural laws by which they are ruled, he could
not, of course, have sought to discover, since the
principle on which he set out predicated the non-
existence of such laws. The advantage of the peep
enjoyed into his private note-book is, that we have
his incompleted inquiries containing the stories as
to which even he — a very poor adept at scepticism

Robert Wodrow. 343

— required some confirmation. It is quite evident
that we thus have something more valuable to
philosophy, and infinitely more amusing, than his
completed labours would have been. Here, for
instance, is one of his break ^downs — :an interest-
ing phenomenon, but not irrefragably proved.

"This day I have an accompt from Marion
Stevenson, who says' she had it from one who was
witness to it, that near Dunglass there was a child
found upon the highway by some shearers, to their
uptaking lately born ; and they brought it to the
next house, where the woman putting on the pan
to make some meat for it, the pan filled full of corn ;
and when she turned it out and put it on the second
time, it filled full of bear; and when put on the
third time, it filled full of blood ; and upon this the
child began to alter its shapes some way, and to
speak, and told them this year should have great
plenty, and the next year also, but the third the
land should be filled with blood and fire and sword !
and the child desired it might 'be taken to the place
where it was found, and left there. I hear not yet
what was done with it. This is so incredible, that
I set it down only, for after trial and inquiry about
it — no confirmation."

His wife tells him a story which in her youth she
had heard narrated by Mr Andrew Reid, minister of
Kirkbean. It is a case of true love crossed by the
interference of cruel relations. The swain leaves the

344 Book-Club Literature.

country for several years^ — gets on — remembers the
old love, and returns to fulfil his vows. It happens
that on the day of his return the loved one dies.
He is on his way to her house in the dusk of eve
when he meets an old man, who tells him that he
is going on a bootless errand — ^he will find a dead
corpse for the warm living heart he expected. The
stranger, however, pitying his distress, tells him
there is a remedy — hands to the lover certain pills,
and says, " If you will give her these, she will re-
cover." So it turned out, and they were happily
married. A certain visitor at the house, however,
"a very eminent Christian," refused to salute the
lady with the usual courtesies. He takes the hus-
band aside, "and tells him that he was very much
persuaded his wife was a devil, and indeed he could
not salute her ; and after some discourse prevailed
so far with him as to follow his advice, which was
to go with her and take her to that room where he
found her, and lay her down upon the bed where he
found her, and quit her of a devil. Which he did,
and immediately she became a dead corpse half con-
sumed." "This had need," says cautious Wodrow,
"to be weel attested, and I have writ to Mr Reid
anent it." Curiosity urged me to look for and find
among Wodrow's manuscripts Mr Reid's answer.
He says he often heard the story from his father as
a truth, but had been unaccountably negligent in
noting the particulars of it ; and then he favours his

Robert Wodrow. 345

correspondent with some special providences anent
himself, which appear not to have been sufficiently-
pungent for Wodrow's taste.

A philosophical investigator of the established
national superstitions would find excellent types of
all of them in the Analecta. In the department of
second-sight, for instance, restricted, with due obser-
vance to geographical propriety, within the High-
land line, a guest disturbs a convivial meeting at
Blair-Athol by exclaiming that he beholds a dirk
sticking in the breast of their entertainer. That
night he is stabbed to the heart ; and even while
the seer beheld the visionary dagger, a bare-leg-
ged gilly was watching outside to execute a long-
cherished Highland vengeance. The Marquess of
Argyle, who was afterwards beheaded, was playing
with some of his clan at bowls, or bullets, as Wod-
row calls them, for he was not learned in the nomen-
clature of vain recreations. "One of the players,
when the Marquess stooped down to lift the bullet,
fell pale, and said to them about him, ' Bless me !
what is that I see? — my Lord with the head off,
and all his shoulders full of blood.'" >

In the department of fairy tricks, the infant of
Thomas Paton, " a very eminent Christian," in its
first use of speech, rattles out a volley of terrific
oath.s, then eats two cheeses, and attempts to cut
its brother's throat. This was surely sufficient evi-
dence to satisfy the most sceptical that it was a

346 Book-Club Litercti^re.

changeling, even had it not, as the result of certain
well -applied prayers, "left the house with an ex-
traordinary howling and crying."

Ghost and witch stories abound. The following
is selected on account of the eminence of its hero,
Gilbert Rule, the founder and first Principal of the
University of Edinburgh : He was travelling on
the dreary road across the Grampians, called the
Cairn o' Mont, on which stood a lone desolate inn.
It has now disappeared, but I remember it in its
dreary old age, standing alone on the moor, with its
grim gables and its loupin'-on stane, — ^just , the sort
of place where, in the romances, the horrified tra-
veller used to observe a trap-door in his bedroom
floor, and at supper picked the finger of a murdered
man out of a mutton-pie. There Rule arrived late
at night seeking accommodation, but he could get
none — the house was crammed. The only alterna-
tive was to make a bed for him in an empty house
close by ; it had been unoccupied for thirty years,
and had a bad repute. He had to sleep there alone,
for his servant would not go with him. Let Wod-
row himself tell what came to pass.

"He walked some time in the room, and com-
mitted himself to God's protection, and went to
bed. There were two candles left on the table, and
these he put out. There was a -large bright fire
remaiiiing. He had not been long in bed till the
room door is opened, and an apparition, in shape

Robert Wodrow. 347

of a CQuntry tradesman, came in and opened the
curtains without speaking a word. Mr Rule was
resolved to do nothing till it should speak or attack
him, but lay still with full composure, committing
himself to the Divine protection and conduct. The
apparition went to the table, lighted the two candles,
brought them to the bedside, and made some steps
toward the door, looking still to the bed, as if he
would have Mr Rule rising and following. Mr
Rule still lay still, till he should see his way further
cleared. Then the apparition, who the whole time
spoke none, took an effectual way to raise the doc-
tor. He carried back the candles to the table, and
went to the fire, and with the tongs took down
the kindled coals, and laid them on the deal cham-
ber floor. The doctor then thought it time to rise
and put on his clothes, in the time of which the
spectre laid up the coals again in the chimney, and,
going to the table, lifted the candles and went to
the door, opened it, still looking to the Principal as
he would have him following the candles, which he
now, thinking there was something extraordinary
in the case, after looking to God for direction, in-
clined to do. The apparition went down some
steps with the candles, and carried them into a
long trance, at the end, of which there was a stair
which carried down, to a low room. This the spectre
went down, and stooped, and set down the lights on
the lowest step of the, stair, and straight disappears."

348 Book-Club Literature.

The learned Principal, whose courage and cool-
ness deserve the highest commendation, lighted him-
self back to bed with the candles, and took the
remainder of his rest undisturbed. Being a man of
great sagacity, on ruminating over his adventure,
he informed the sheriff of the county " that he was
much of the mind there was murder in the case."
The stone whereon the candles were placed was
raised, and there "the plain remains of a human
body were found, and bones, to the conviction of
all." It was supposed to be an old affair, however,
and no traces could be got of the murderer. Rule
undertook the functions of the detective, and pressed
into the service the influence of his own profession.
He preached a great sermon on the occasion, to
which all the neighbouring people were summon-
ed ; and behold, " in the time of his sermon, an
old man near eighty years was awakened, and fell
a-weeping, and before all the whole company ac-
knowledged that, at the building of that house, he
was the murderer."

In Wodrow's note-book the devil often cuts a
humiliating figure, and is treated with a deal of
rude and boisterous jeering. A certain " exercised
Christian," probably during a fit of indigestion, was
subjected to a heavy wrestling with doubts and
irreconcilable difficulties, which raised in his mind
horrible suggestions. The devil took occasion to
put in a word or two for the purpose of increasing

Robert Wodrow. 349

the confusion, but it had the directly opposite
effect, and called forth the remark that, "on the
whole the devil is a great fool, and outshoots him-
self oft when he thinks he has poor believers on
the haunch." On another occasion the devil per-
formed a function of a very unusual kind, one
would think. He is known to quote Scripture
for his purposes, but who ever before heard of
his writing a sermon — and, as it seems, a sound
and orthodox one ? There was, it appears, a youth
in the University of St Andrews, preparing to un-
dergo his trials as a licentiate, who had good reason
to fear that he would be plucked. He found he
could make nothing whatever of the trial sermon,
and was wandering about by lonely ways, seeking
in vain for inspiration. At last " there came up to
him a stranger, in habit like a minister, in black
coat and band, and who addressed the youth very
courteously." He was mighty inquisitive, and at
length wormed out the secret grief " I have got
a text from the Presbytery. I cannot for my life
compose a discourse on it, so I shall be affronted."
The stranger replied — " Sir, I am a minister ; let
me hear the text?" He told him. "Oh, then, I
have an excellent sermon on that text in my
pocket, which you may peruse and commit to
your memory. I engage, after you have delivered
it before the Presbytery, you will be greatly ap-
proven and applauded." The youth received it

350 Book- Club Literutnre.

thankfully ; but one good turn deserves another.
The stranger had an eccentric fancy that he should
have a written promise from the youth to do him
afterwards any favour in his power; and there being
no other liquid conveniently at hand for the signa-
ture of the document, a drop of the young man's
blood was drawn for the purpose. Note now what
followed. "Upon the Presbytery day the youth
delivered an excellent sermon upon the text ap-
pointed him, which pleased and amazed the Pres-
bytery to a degree ; only Mr Blair smelt out some-
thing in it which made him call the youth aside to
the corner of the church, and thus he began with-
him : ' Sir, you have delivered a nate sermon, every
way well' pointed. The matter was profound, or
rather sublime ; your style was fine and your method
clear ; and, no doubt, young men at the beginning
must make use of helps, which I doubt not you
have done.' So beginning, Blair, who was a man
of mighty gifts and repute, pressed on so close with
repeated questions that the awful truth at last
came out." There was nothing for it but that the
Presbytery must engage in special exercise for the
penitent youth. They prayed each in succession to
no purpose, till it came to Blair's turn. "In time
of his prayer there came a violent rushing of wind
upon the church — so great that they thought the
church should have fallen down about their ears
— and with that the youth's paper and covenant

Robert Wodrow. 351

drops down from the roof of the church among the
ministers."

A large proportion of Wodrow's special provi-
dences are performed for the benefit of the clergy,
either to provide them with certain worldly neces-
saries of which they may happen to be in want,
or to give effect to their pious indignation, or,
as some might be tempted to call it, their vindic-
tive spite, again those who revile them. Perhaps
an interdicted pastor, wandering over the desolate
moors where he and his hunted flock seek refuge,
is sorely impeded by some small want of the flesh,
and gives expression to his wishes concerning it ;
when forthwith he is miraculously supplied with a
shoulder of mutton or a pair of trousers, according
to the nature of his necessities. He encounters
ridicule or personal insult, and instantly the blas-
phemer is struck dead, or idiotic, or dumb, after the
example of those who mocked EHsha's bald head ;
and Wodrow generally winds up these judgments
with an appropriate admonitory text, as, for in-
stance, "Touch not His anointed, and do His pro-
phets no harm." As the persons for whom these
special miracles are performed generally happen to
be sorely beset by worldly privations and dangers^,
which are at their climax at the very time when,
they are able to call in supernatural intervention,
a logician might be inclined to ask why, if the
operations, and, as it were, the very motives, of the

352 Book-Club Literature.

Deity are examined in respect of those events which
are propitious to His favourite, they should not also
be examined with the same critical pertinacity as to
the greatly predominating collection of events which
are decidedly unpropitious to him, so as to bring
out the reason why the simpler course of saving
him from all hardships and persecution had not
been followed, instead of. the circuitous plan of
launching heavy calamities against him, and then
issuing special miraculous powers to save him from
a small portion of these calamities. But such logic
would probably be unprofitably bestowed, and it is
wiser to take the narratives as they stand and
make the best use of them. Whoever looks at
them with a cold scientific eye, will at once be
struck by the close analogy of Wodrow's vaticina-
tions and miracles to those of other times and
places, and especially to those credited to the saints
of the early Catholic Church, to which many of
them, indeed, bear a wonderfully exact resemblance.

CJie 3Earlg WflrtfjEtn Saints.

[|ARRIED on by the power of associa-
tion, we are thus brought to the door
of an exceedingly interesting depart-
ment of book-club literature, — the res-
toration of the true text of the early lives of the

The Early Northern Saints. 353

saints — a species of literature now recognised and
separated from others by the title of Hagiology.
Everybody knows, or ought to know, that the great
library of this kind of literature, published by the
Bollandists, begins with the beginning of the year,
and gives the life of each saint successively accord-
ing to his day in the calendar. Ignorance is more
excusable on the question what constitutes saint-
ship, and, supposing you to have found your saint,
on the criterion by which the day of his festival
should be adjusted in the calendar. Technically,
to make a saint, there should be an act of pontifical
jurisdiction, all the more solernn than any secular
judicial act as the interests affected are more mo-
mentous ; but only a small number of the saints
stand on record in the proceedings of the Vatican.
In fact, the great body of them were in the enjoy-
ment of their honours hundreds of years before the
certifying process was adopted, and to investigate
all their credentials was far too weighty a task to be
attempted. It is taken for granted that they have
been canonised, and if it be difficult to prove that
they have gone through this ceremony, they hold
their ground through the still greater difficulty of
proving that they have not. Some of those whose
sanctity is established by this kind of acclamation
are so illustrious, that it would be ludicrous to sup-
pose even the Vatican capable of adding to their
eminence — more so, to imagine any process by

z

354 Book- Club Literature.

which they could be unsanctified ; such are St Pat-
rick, St George, and St Kentigern. But there is
a vast crowd of village or parochial saints firmly
established within their own narrow circles, but as
unknown at the court of Rome as any obscure
curate working in some distant valley, or among
the poor of some great city. In such a crowd there
will naturally be questionable personages. St Val-
entine, St Fiacre, St Boniface, St Lupus, St Mac-
cesso, St Bobbio, St Fursy, and St Jingo, have
names not endowed with a very sanctimonious
sound, but they are well-established respectable
saints. Even Alban Butler, however, has hard work
in giving credit to St Longinus, St Quirinus, St
Mercurius, St Hermes, St Virgil, St Plutarch, and
St Bacchus. It is the occurrence of such names
that makes Moreri speak of the Bollandist selection
as rather loose, since it contains "vies des saintes
bonnes, mediocres, mauvaises, vrayes, douteuses, et
fausses."

The saint's festival-day is generally the anniver-
sary of his death, or " deposition," as it is technically
termed ; but this is by no means an absolute rule.
Few compilers deserve more sympathy than those
who try to adjust saints' days by rule and chron-
ology, since not only does one saint differ from
another in the way in which his feast is established,
but for the same saint there are different days in
different countries, and even in different ecclesiasti-

The. Early Northern Saints. 355

cal; districts — the dioce;se,of Paris having, for in-
stance, some special saints' days of its , own, which
differ from , the practice throughout , thp rest of
Catholic Christendom. Some saints, too, have been
shifted about from day to day by authority. Queen
Margaret of Spotland, the wife of Malcolm, whose
real source of influence was that she represented
the old Saxon line of England, h^-d two great days,
— that of her deposition on July the 8th, and that
of her translation on July the 19th ; but, by a papal
ordinance imnjediately after th,e Revolution, her
festival was established upon the ipth of June.
This was ratlier a remarkable day in Britain, being
that on which the poor infant son of the last of the
Jameses, afterwards jknown in Parliamentary lan-
guage as the Pretender, was born. The adjustment
of Queen Margaret's day to that event was a stroke
of policy for the purpose of rendering the poor child
respectable, and removing all doubts about warming-
pans and other disagreeables; but it is not known
that the measure exercised, the slightest influence on
the British ; Parliame;it.,

BoUandus, who was the , first seriously to lay his
hand to the great work called after him, was a
Belgian Jesuit. He had got through January and
February, -in five folio volumes, when he died in
1658. Under the auspices of his successor, Daniel
Papebroch, March appeared in 1668 and April in
167s, each in three , volumes. So the great work

356 Book-Club Literature.

crept on day by day and year by year, absorbing
the whole lives of many devoted labourers, con-
spicuous among whom are the unmelodious names
of Peter Boschj John Stilting, Coristantine Suysk-
hen, Urban Sticken, Cornelius Bye, James Bue, and
Ignacius Huben^. In 1762, a hundred and four
years after January, September was completed. It
filled eight volumes, for the work accumulated like
a snow-ball as it rolled, each month being larger
than its predecessor. Here the ordinary copies
stop in forty-seven volumes, for the evil days of
the Jesuits were coming on, and the new literary oli-
garchy, where Voltaire, Montesquieu, and D'Alem-
bert held sway, had not been propitious to hagi-
ology. A part of October was accomplished under
the auspices of Maria Theresa, the Empress Queen,
but for some reason or other it came within the
category of rare books, and was not to 'be easily
obtained until it was lately reprinted.

Whatever effect such a phenomenon may have on
some denominations of the religious world, it can
afford nothing but pure satisfaction to all historical
investigators to know that this great work has been
resumed' in this middle of the nineteenth century.
I have before me the ninth volume for October,
embracing the twentieth and twenty-first days of
that month, and containing about as much matter
as the five volumes of Macaulay's' History. On the
2 1 St of October there is, to be sure, a very heavy

The Early Northern Saints. 357

job to be got through- in St Ursula and her eleven
thousand virgins, whose bones may be seen in musty
presses in the, Church of the Ursulines in Cologne ;
but still as it moves forward, it is evident that the
mighty work continues to enlarge its proportions.
The winter is coming on too, a period crowded
with the memorials of departed saints, as being
unprppitious to men of highly ascetic habits, so
that J those who have undertaken the completion
of the Bollandist enterprise have their work before
them.

There is a marvellous uniformity in all the ar-
rangements of this array of volumes which have
thus appeared at intervals' throughout two cen-
turies. They dealt with matter too sublimely sep-
arated from the temporal doings of men to be
affected by political events, yet could they not
entirely escape some slight touches i from the con-
vulsions that had recast the whole order and con-
ditions of society. When October was begun,
Belgium, where the work is published, was attached
to the Austrian Empire, and the French Revolution
had not yet come. The Jesuits, though not favour-
ites among monarchs, profess a decorous loyalty,
and the earlier volumes of the month have portraits
of the Empress Queen, and others of the Imperial
family, in the most elaborate court costume of the
days before the Revolution ; while the later vol-
umes, still loyal, are illustrated by the family circle

358 Book-Club Literature.

of the Protestant King of constitutional Belgium,
whose good-natured face and plain broad-cloth coat
are those doubtless of the right man, though one
cannot help imagining that he feels himself' some-
how in the wrong place.

The crowds of saints who come sometimes swarm-
ing in on a single day to these teeming volumes,
give one an almost oppressive notion of the quan-
tity of goodness that muSt have, after all, existed in
this wicked world. The labours of the BoUandists,
not only in searching through all available litera-
ture, but in a special correspondence established
with their Jesuit brethren throughout the world,
are absolutely astounding. Their conscientious
minuteness is wonderful ; and many a one who
thinks he is master of the ecclesiastical lore of
his own parish, which he has made his specialty,
has been petrified to find what he thbiight his dis-
coveries all laid down with carfeful precision- as
matters of ordinary knowledge in some corner of
these mighty ' volumes. The BoUandists obtained
their irfformation from the spot, and it is on the
spot that this kind of literature must be worked
out. A thoroughly accomplished antiquary, work-
ing within a limited district, will thus bring 'forth
more full andi satisfactory results, so far as they go,
than even the' BoUandists have achieved, and hence
the great value of the services of the book clubs
to hagiology. '

The Early Northern Saints. 359

The writer of the letters bearing the signature
"Veritas," in all the newspapers, would, of course,
specially object to the resuscitation of this class of
literature, " because it is full of fabulous accounts of
miracles and other supernatural events which can
only minister to credulity and superstition." But
even in the extent and character of this very ele-
ment there is a great significance. The size of a
current falsehood is the measure of the size of the
human belief that has swallowed it, and is a com-
ponent part of the history of man.

The best critical writers on ancient history have
agreed not to throw away the cosmogony and the
hierology of Greece. It is part of Grecian history
that the creed of the people was filled with a love
of embodied fancies, so graceful and luxuriant. No
less are the revel rout of Valhalla part of the virtual
history of the Scandinavian tribes. But the lives
of our saints, independently altogether of the mo-
mentous change in human affairs and prospects
which they ushered in, have a substantial hold on
history, of which neither the classical nor the north-
ern hierology can boast. Poseidon and Aphrodite,
Odin and Freya, vanish into the indefinite and un-
discoverable at the approach of historical criticism.
But separately altogether from their miracles, Cuth-
bert and Ninian, Columba and Kentigern, had actual
existences. We know when they lived and' when
they died. The closer that historical criticism dogs

360 Book-Club Literature.

their steps, the clearer it sees them, and the more
it knows about their actual lives and ways. Even
if they were not the missionaries who introduced
Christianity among us, — as men who, in the old
days before Britain became populous and affluent
in the fruits of advanced civilisation, trod the soil
that we tread, it would be interesting to know
about them — about the habitations they lodged in,
the garments they wore, the food they ate, the
language they spoke, their method of social inter-
course among each other, and the sort of govern-
ment under which they lived.

That by investigation and critical inquiry we can
know more of these things than our ancestors of
centuries past could know, is still a notion compara-
tively new which has not been popularly realised.
The classic literature in which our early training lies
has nothing in it to show us the power of historical
inquiry, and much to make us slight it The
Romans, instead of improving on the Greeks, fell
in this respect behind them. Father Herodotus,
credulous as he was, was a better antiquary than
any who wrote in Latin before the revival of letters.
Occupied entirely with the glory of their conquests,
and blind to the future which their selfish tyranny
was preparing for them, the Romans were equally
thoughtless of the past, unless it were exaggerated
and falsified into a narrative to aggrandise their
own glory. Their authors abdicated the duty of

The Early Northern Saints. 361

leaving to the world the true narrative of the early-
struggles and achievements out of which the Re-
public and the Empire aroge. It is easy to be
sceptical at any time. We can cut away Romultis
and Remus from accepted history now, hundreds of
years after the Empire has ceased to govern or
exist. But the golden opportunity for sifting the
genuine out of the fabulous has long passed away.
It . is seldom possible to construct the infant his-
tories of departed nationalities. The difference be-
tween the facilities which a nation has for finding
out its own early history, and those which strangers
have for constructing it when the nationality has
allowed its deathbed to pass over without the per-
formance of that patriotic task, is nearly as great
as a _ man's own facilities for writing the history of
his youth, and those of the biographer who makes
inquiries about him after he is buried.

We are becoming wiser than the Romans in this
as in other matters, and are constructing the infant
histories of the various European nations out of
the materials which each possesses. The biogra-
phies of those saints or missionaries who first dif-
fused the light of the Gospel among the various
communities of the Christian north, form a very
large elenjent in these materials ; and no wonder,
when we remember that the Church possessed all
the literature, such as it was, of the age. In apply-
ing, however, to the British Empire, this newf source

362 Book-Club Literature.

of historical information, there arose the difficulty
that it was chiefly supplied from Ireland. If all
hagiology were under a general suspicion of the
fabulous, Irish history was known to be a luxuriant
preserve of fables, and these causes of dubiety being
multiplied by each other in the mind, it seemed
almost impossible to obtain a hearing for the new
voice. In fact, during a long period the three
nations were engaged in a competition which
should carry its history through the longest track
of fictitious glory, and this was a kind of work in
which Ireland beat her neighbours entirely. Hence,
when all were pressing pretty close upon the
Deluge, Ireland took the leap at once and cleared
that gulf. As a fairish record of these successful
efforts; I would recommend to the reader's notice
a very well-conditioned and truly learned-looking
folio volume, called "The General History of Ire-
land, collected by the learned Jeffrey Keating,
D.D., faithfully translated from the original Irish
Language, with many curious Amendments taken
from the Psalters of Tara and Cashel, with other
authentic Records, by Dermod O'Connor, Anti-
quary to the Kingdom of Ireland." Opposite to
the title-page is a full-length portrait of Brian
Boroomh, whose ■ fame has been increased of late
years by the achievements of his descendant in the
cabbage-garden. The monarch is in full burnished
plate armour, with scarf and surcoat — all three

The Early Northern Saints. 363

centuries at least later in fashion than the era
attributed to him. But that is a trifle. It would
involve much hard and useless work to make war
on the anachronisms of historical portraits, and we
are not to judge of historical works by their en-
graved decorations. Here, however, the picture is
sober truth itself to what the inquiring reader finds
in the typography. After the descriptive geo-
graphical introduction common in old histories,
the real commencement comes upon us in this
form : —

"Of the first invasion of Ireland before the
Flood ! " " Various," the author tells us, " are the
opinions concerning the first mortal that set a foot
upon this island. We are told by some that three
of the daughters of Cain arrived here, several
hundred years before the Deluge. The white
book, which in the Irish is called Leabhar Dhroma
Sneachta, informs us that the oldest of these
daughters was called Banba, and gave a name to
the whole kingdom. After these, we are told that
three men and fifty women arrived in the island ;
one of them was called Ladhra, from whom was
derived the name of Ardladhan. These people
lived forty years in the country, and at last they
all died of a certain distemper in a week's time.
From their death, it is said that the island was
uninhabited for the space of an hundred years, till
the world was drowned. We are told that the

364 Book-Club Literature.

first who set foot upon the island were three fisher-
men that were driven thither by a storm from the
coast of Spain. They were pleased with the dis-
covery they had made, and resolved to settle in
the country ; but they agreed first to go back for
their wives, and in their return were unfortunately
drowned by the waters of the Deluge at a place
called Tuath Inbhir. The names of these three
fishermen were Capa, Laighne, and Luasat. Others,
again, are of opinion that Ceasar, the daughter of
Bith, was the first that came into the island before
the Deluge. . . . When Noah was building the
ark to preserve himself and his family from the
Deluge, Bith, the father of Ceasar, sent to desire
an apartment for him and his daughter, to save
them from the approaching danger., : Noah, having
no authority from Heaven to receive them into the
ark, denied his request. Upon this repulse, Bith
Fiontan, the husband of Ceasar, and Ladhra her
brother, consulted among themselves what measures
they should take in this extremity."

The result was, that, like the Laird of Macnab,
they "built a boat o' their ain," but on a much larger
scale, being a fair match with the ark itself. But
justice should be done to every one. The learned
Dr Keating does not give us all this as veritable
history ; on the contrary, being of a sceptical turn
of mind, he has courage enough to stem the national
prejudice, and throw doubt on the narrative.' He

The Early Northern Saints. 365

even rises up into something like eloquent scorn
when he discusses the manner in which some ante-
diluvian annals were said to be preserved. Thus : —

" As for such of them who say that Fiontan was
drowned in the Flood, and afterwards came to life,
and lived to publish the antediluvian history of the
island — what can they propose by such chimerical
relations, but to amuse the ignorant with strange
and romantic tales, to corrupt and perplex the
original annals, and to raise a jealousy that no
manner of credit is to be given to the true and
authentic chronicles of that kingdom ? "

I shall quote no more until after the doctor,
having exhausted his sceptical ingenuity about the
antediluvian stories, finds himself again on firm
ground, prepared to afford his readers, without any
critical misgivings, " an account of the first inhabit-
ants of Ireland after the Flood." He now tells us
with simple and dignified brevity that "the king-
dom of Ireland lay waste and uninhabited for the
space of three hundred years after the Deluge, till
Partholanus, son of Seara, son of Sru, son of Easru,
son of Framant, son of Fathochda, son of Magog,
son of Japhet, son of Noah, arrived there with his
people." From such a patriarchal nomenclature the
reader of Keating is suddenly introduced t6 a story
of domestic scaridal, in which a "footman" and a
" favourite greyhound " make their frequent appear-
ance. Then follow many great epochs^-the arrival

366 Book-Club Literature.

of the Firbolgs, the dynasty of the Tuatha dq
Danans, with revolutions and battles countless, be-
fore we come to the commencement of a settled
dynasty of kings, of whom more than ninety reigned
before the Christian era. It is, after all, more sad
than ridiculous to remember that within the. present
generation many historians believed not only what
Keating thus tells as truth, but also what he ven-
tured to doubt ; and if the English antiquaries,
according to their wont, called for records,— did
these not exist abundantly, if they could be got at,
in those authentic genealogies, which were from
time to time adjusted and collated with so much
skill and scrupulous accuracy by the official anti-
quaries who met in the Hall of Tara ? The reader
unacquainted with such an out-of-the-way and rather
weedy corner of literature, niay think this vague
exaggeration ; and I shall finish it by quoting the
latest printed, so far as I know, of the numerous
solemn and methodical statements about the manner
in which the records of these very distant matters
were authenticated.

"When the said princes got the kingdom into
their hands, they assigned large territories to their
antiquaries and their posterity to preserve their
pedigree, exploits, actions, &c. ; and so very strict
they were on this point, that they established a
triennial convention at Tara, where the chief kings
of Ireland dwelt, where all the antiquaries of the

The Early Northern Saints. 367

nation met every third year to have their chronicles
and antiquities examined before the king of Ireland,
the four provincial kings, the king's antiquary-royal,
&c. ; the least forgery in the antiquary was punished
with death, and loss of estate to his posterity for
ever — so very exact they were in preserving their
venerable monuments, and leaving them to poster-
ity truly and candidly ; so that even at this day
(though our nation lost estate and all almost) there
is not an ancient name of Ireland, of the blood-
royal thereof descended, but we can bring, from
father to father, from the present man in being to
Adam — and I, Thaddy O' Roddy, who wrote this,
have written all the families of the Milesian race
from this present age to Adam."^

To all this preposterous, ^pd now scarcely credible
extravagance of fiction, there attaches a melancholy
political moral. Poor Ireland, trodden by a dom-
inant party whose hand was strengthened by her
potent neighbour, sought relief from the gloom of
the present, by looking far back into the fabulous
glories of the past — and it seemed the last drop in
her cup of bitterness when thrs pleasant vista was
also to be closed by the hard utilitarian hand of the
unsympathising. Saxon.

After " this sort of thing " it was naturally diffi-
cult to get sensible men to listen to proposals for

> Mjscel. of Irish Arch. Soc.', i. 120.

368 Book-Club Literature.

opening valuable new sources of early history in
Irefland. In fact, down to the time when Moore
wrote his History in 1835, no one could venture to
look another in the face when speaking of the early
Irish annals, and the consequence was that that
accomplished author wilfully shut his eyes to the
rich supply of historical materials in which he
might have worked to brilliant effect.

Yet, upon the general face of history, it must on
examination have been fairly seen that Ireland is
the natural place where a great proportion of what-
ever is to be known about the primitive Church in
the British Islands was to be found. Indeed, in the
history of Christianity, not the least wonderful chap-,
ter contains the episode of the repose in the West,
where a portion of the Church, having settled down,
grew up in calm obscurity, protected by distance
from the desolating contest which was breaking up
the empire of the world, and raged more or less
wherever the Roman sway had penetrated. Of the
southern Britons it could no longer be said, as in
the days of Augustus, that they were cut off from
all the world. England was an integral part of the
empire, where, if the pi'oconSul or legionary com-
mander had not the hot sun and blue sky of Italy,
there were partial compensations in the bracing air
which renewed his wasted strength, the new and
peculiar luxuries in the shape of shellfish and
wildfowl that enriched his table, and the facilities

The Early Northern Saints. 369

which his insular authority afforded him for strength-
ening his political position, and plotting for a frag-
ment of the disintegrating empire. An admiral of
the Roman fleet had at one time established his
power in Britain, where he set up as Caesar, and
sought to create a new imperial centre. Thus the
southern part of Britain was a province of the
true Roman empire awaiting the coming of the
wild hordes who were gathering for the general
overthrow, and was not the place where either the
Christian Church or Italian civilisation could find
permanent refuge. The destined destroyer was in-
deed close at hand. Though the Romans had their
walls, their roads, their forts, and even a few villas
in Scotland, yet one going northward at that time
through the territories of the Gadeni and the Ota-
deni, would observe the Romanised character of the
country gradually decreasing, until he found himself
among those rough independent northern tribes,
who, under the name of Picts and Scots, drove the
Romanised Britons into the sea, and did for the
insular portion of the empire what the hordes who
were called Goths, Franks, and Alemanni, were
doing in the Roman provinces of the Continent.

Behind the scene of this destructive contest, Chris-
tianity, having been planted, flourished in peaceful
poverty. It grew here and there over Ireland, and
in a small portion of the remote part of Scotland ;
and the distance from the scene of warfare necessary

2 A

370 Book-Club Literature.

for its safety is shown by the fate of St Ninian's
little church in the Mull of Galloway. It was too
near the field of strife to live. The isolation in
which the western Christians thus arose, was pro-
ductive of ecclesiastical conditions very remarkable
in themselves, but perfectly natural as the effects
of their peculiar causes. The admirable organisa-
tion for carrying out the civil government of the
Roman empire, was a ready - made hierarchy for
carrying out the ecclesiastical supremacy of the
Bishop of Rome. It was far from the object of
those who seized on the power of the Caesars to
abolish that power. On the contrary, they desired
to work it on their own account, and thus the
machinery of the empire lived, exercising more or
less vitality and power, down to the first French
Revolution.

No part of its civil organisation, however, retained
the comprehensive vitality which the learning and
subtlety of the priesthood enabled them to preserve,
or rather restore, to its spiritual branch. Hence,
wherever the conquerors of Rome held sway, there
the priests of Rome obtained a sway also. But the
one little fragment of the primitive Church, which
had been so curiously cut off during the great con-
test, was beyond the sway of the conquerors of
Rome, as it had been beyond the sway of the
Emperors themselves. Hence, while the Church,
as united to Rome, grew up in one great uniform

The Early Northern Saints. 371

hierarchy, the small, isolated Church in the West
grew up with different usages and characteristics ;
and when afterwards those who followed them were
charged with schism, they asserted that they had
their canons and usages directly from the apostles,
from whom they had obtained the Gospel and the
regulations of the Church pure and undefiled. Thus
arose the renowned contest between the early Scot-
tish Church and the rest of Christendom about the
proper period of observing Easter, and about the
form of the tonsure. Hence, too, arose the debates
about the peculiar discipline of the communities
called Culdees, who, having to frame their own
system of church government for themselves, hum-
ble, poor, and isolated as they were, constructed it
after a different fashion from the potent hierarchy of
Rome. The history of these corporations possesses
extreme interest, even to those who follow it without
a predetermined design to identify every feature of
their arrangements with a modern English diocese,
or with a modern Scottish presbytery ; and not the
least interesting portion of this history is its conclu-
sion, in the final absorption, not without a struggle,
of these isolated communities within the expanding
hierarchy of the Popes.

In a few humble architectural remains, these
primitive bodies have left vestiges of their peculiar
character to the present day. Neither deriving the
form of their buildings nor their other observances

372 Book-Club Literature.

from Rome, they failed to enter with the rest of
the Church on that course of construction which led
towards Gothic architecture. The earliest Christian
churches on the Continent were constructed on the
plan of the Roman basilica, or court of justice, and
wherever the Church of Rome spread, this method
of construction went with her. The oldest style of
church-building — that which used to be called
Saxon, and is now sometimes termed Norman,
and sometimes Romanesque — degenerated directly
from the architecture of Rome. There are ecclesi-
astical buildings in France and Italy, of which it
might fairly be debated, from their style, whether
they were built by the latest of the classical, or the
earliest of the Gothic architects. The little Church
in the West had not the benefit of such models.
Places of worship, and cells, or oratories, were built
of timber, turf, or osiers. The biographer of Col-
umba, describes his followers as collecting wattles
for the construction of their first edifice. But they
had also a few humble dwellings of stone, which,
naturally enough, had no more resemblance to the
proud fanes of the Romish hierarchy, than the
primitive edifices of Mexico and New Zealand had
to those of modern Europe. They were first found
in Ireland ; more lately, they have been traced in
the Western Isles. They are small rude domes of
rough stone ; and if it may seem strange that the
form adapted to the grandest of all architectural

The Early Northern Saints. 373

achievements should be accomplished by those
rude masons who could not make a Roman arch,
it must be remembered, that while the arch cannot
be constructed without artificial support or scaffold-
ing, a dome on a small scale may, and is indeed the
form to which rude artists, with rude stones, and
no other materials, would naturally be driven. It
is that in which boys build their snow-houses. I
shall not easily forget how, once, accompanying a
piscatorial friend on the Loch of Curran, near Bally-
skelligs, in Kerry, I stepped on a small island to
visit a Norman ruin there, and saw, besides the
ruin and a stone cross, one of these small rough
domes, testifying, by its venerable simplicity, that
it had stood there centuries before the Norman
church beside it. But the peculiar characteristics
of the architecture of the West did not stop short
with these simple types. It advanced, carrying in
its advance its own significant character, until it
became mingled with the architecture propagated
from Rome, as the Christian community which
worshipped within the buildings became absorbed
in the hierarchy. The Oratory of Galerus, in
Kerry, is a piece of solid, well-conditioned ma-
sonry, built after a plan of no mean symmetry
and proportion, yet with scarcely a feature in
common with the early Christian churches of the
rest of Europe. Like the ruder specimens, it strug-
gles for as much solidity and spaciousness as it can

374 Book-Club Literature.

obtain in stonework without the help of the arch,
and it makes a good deal out of the old Egyptian
plan of gradually narrowing the courses of stones
inwardsj until they come so near that large slabs
of stone can be thrown across the opening. Some
buildings of the same sort have been lately revealed
in the island of Lewis : one is named Teampul
Rona, and another, which is dedicated to St Flan-
nan, Teampul Beannachadh.^ The specialty of both
these, as well as of the Irish buildings, is that they
are edifices beyond all question raised for Christian
worship, that they have been built with pains and
skill, and yet that they have no vestige of that
earlier type of Christian architecture which Europe
in general obtained from Rome.

In offering a few stray remarks on the lives of
the saints, or, more properly speaking, the mission-
aries, whose labours lay in the British Isles, it would
be pedantic to cite the precise document, printed
generally for one or other of the book clubs, which
supplies the authority for each sentence. I must,
however, mention one authority which stands su-
preme among its brethren — the edition of Adamnan's
Life of St Columba, edited by Dr Reeves, under the
joint patronage of the Irish Archaeological and the
Bannatynie Clubs. The original work has long been

^ See Mr Muir's.very curious volume on "Characteristics of Old
Church Architecture in the Mainland and Western Islands of Scot-
land."'

The Early Northern Saints. 375

accepted as throwing a light on the Christianising
of the North, second only to that shed by the in-
valuable morsels in Bede. With wonderful industry
and learning, the editor has incorporated the small
book of Adamnan in a mass of new mattei', every
word of which is equally instructive and. interesting
to the student.

There is no doubt that the' saints of Irish origin
supply by far the more important portion , of our
hagiology. They are countless. Taking merely a
topographical estimate of them — jlooking, that is, to
ihe names of places which have been dedicated to
them, or otherwise bear their names — we find< them
crowding Ireland, and swarming over the Highlands
of Scotland and the north of England into London
itself, where . St Bride's Well has given a gloomy
perpetuity to the name of the first and greatest of
Ir'.sh feniale saints. Some people would be content
to attribute the frequentness of sain tship among the
Irish and the Highlanders to the opportunities en-
joyed by them in consequence of the early Church
haying found a refuge in Ireland. Others would
attribute the phenomenon to the extreme suscepti-
bility of the Celtic race to religious enthusiasm,
and would illustrate their views by referring to
the present Celtic population in Ireland under the
dominion of the priests, and their brethren of the
West of Scotland equally under the dominion of
the doctrinal antipodes of the priests; while the

376 Book-Club Literature.

parallel might be illustrated by a reference to those
Highland Franciscans called " The Men," whose
belcher neckcloths represent the cord, and their
Kilmarnock bonnets the cbwl.

At the commencement of Christianity the dif-
ference between the religious Celt and the religious
Saxon was naturally far more conspicuous than it
is now. Bede's description of the thoughtful calm-
ness with which Ethelbert studied the preaching
of Augustin, with all the consequences which the/
adoption of the new creed must bring upon his
kingdom, is still eminently characteristic of the
Saxon nature. In the life of St Wilbrord a sceni
is described which is not easily alluded to with due
reverence. The saint had prevailed on a Frisian
Prince to acknowledge Christianity, and be bap-
tised. Standing by the font, with one foot in tMe
water, a misgiving seized on him, and he inquired
touching his ancestors, whether the greater numrer
of them were in the regions of the blessed, or in
those of the spirits doomed to everlasting perdition.
On being abruptly told by the honest saint tiat
they were all, without exception, in the latter region,
he withdrew his fool; — he would not desert his n.ce
—he would go to the place where he would find lis
dead ancestors.

The conversion of the Picts by Columba seems to
have proceeded deliberately. We find him, in ihe
narrative of his life, exercising much influence bn

The Early Northern Saints. 377

Brud their king, and occasionally enjoying a visit
to the royal lodge on the pleasant banks of Loch-
ness. There he is seen commending his friend and
fellow-labourer St Cormac to the good offices of
the Regulus of the Orkney Islands, who is also at
the court of Brud, to whom he owes something akin
to allegiance ; for Columba looks to Brud as well
as to the Orcadian guest for the proper attention
being paid to Cormac. Still, honoured and re-
spected as he is in the court of the Pictish mon-
arch, Columba is not that omnipotent person which
he finds himself to be in Dalriada and in ,Ireland.
There still sits an unpleasant personage at the
king's gate. A Magus, as he is called — a priest
of the old heathen religion — is in fact well received
at court, where, although doomed to be superseded
by the Christian missionary, he yet seems to have
been retained by the king, as a sort of protest that
he had not put himself entirely under the control of
the priests of the new doctrine.

It was indeed among their own people, the Celts
of Ireland and of the Irish colony in the west of
Scotland, that the reign of these saints was ab-
solute. But if we count this ecclesiastical influence
a feature of the Celtic nation, either the Welsh must
not be counted as Celts, or they must be looked on
as exceptions from this spiritual dominion. They
were the people among whom, of all the tribes who
inhabited Britain between the days of Julius Caesar

378 Book-Club Literature.

and those of William of Normandy, it might have
been primarily expected that we would find the
most vital Christianity and the greatest missionary
force. They professed to have carried with them
into their mountains the traditions and the nation-
ality of that very important portion of the Chris-
tianised Roman Empire which was called Britannia.
When the heart of the Empire became paralysed,
this branch, doubtless after a long harassing con-
test with the Picts and the Irish of the north, was
broken, and partly subjected, partly driven away by
the Saxons. That they should have failed, through
all their revolutions and calamities, to preserve any
remnants of Roman social habits, is not perhaps
wonderful. But that they should have failed to
preserve enough of Christian influence to second
and support the missions sent to the Saxons, so
soon after these had superseded the British power,
looks like an exception to the usual rule of Chris-
tian progress. The Welsh antiquaries, through
meritorious efforts, . strive in vain to establish the
existence of Welsh ecclesiarchs during the time
when the countless saints of Ireland were swarming
over Scotland and penetrating into England. They
point to a stone said to commemorate a victory
gained over' the Picts and the Saxons by the
Britons, not through their courage or their skill in
fight, but by the Halleluiahs raised by two saints
who were present in their host. These saints, how-

The Early Northern Saints. 379

ever, Garmon and Lupus, were, as Bede tells us.
Frenchmen, missionaries from the Gallican Church
to correct the errors of the Britons. The venerable
Bede scolds these Britons roundly for not having kept
up the faith planted among them, and for not hav-
ing been prepared to help Augustin and his followers
in the very hard task of converting the Saxons.
It is a pity that we do not know something more of
Roman Christianity, and indeed of Roman civilisa-
tion generally in Britain, before the Saxon days.
There appears to have been among the Romanised
British Christians little zeal and a good deal of
controversy and dissent, and we hear a great deal
more of the influence of the Pelagian heresy among
them than of the influence of Christianity itself

The scantiness of our acquaintance with Roman
Christianity in Britain is the more to be regretted,
because it would have been very interesting to
compare its manifestations with those of the Church
which found refuge in the West during the dark
days of Rome^the days when the temporal empire
was crushed, and the spiritual enipire had not
arisen. Ais we might expect; from the. ecclesiastical
conditions already noticed, the persons who first
exercise ecclesiastical authority in the two islands
did not derive their strength from any foreign
hierarchy, and' had no connection with Rome. Any
reference, indeed, to the influence of a Roman pon-
tiff, either actual or prospective, in the life of any

380 Book-Club Literature.

of our early saints, will prepare the critic for finding
that the life has been written centuries after the
era of the saint, or has been tampered with. In
Adamnan's Life of Columba, Rome is mentioned
once or twice as a vzry great city, but there is
no allusion throughout that remarkable biography
to any spiritual central authority exercised by the
bishop there over the presbyters in Scotland and
Ireland. This is, of course, nothing more than the
statement of what the reader of a book has not
found in it. Any other reader may find allusions
to the supremacy of the popedom over these early
Christian communities, if he can. But I think he
is likely to find none ; and any one who desires to
study the real history of the rise and progress of
the spiritual dominion of Rome would, with more
profit, take up the books and records referring to
events three or four hundred years after the age
of Columba.

Self-sustained as they were, these isolated com-
munities had a very strong vitality. The picture
exhibited in the hagiographies is truly the reign
of the saints. Their power was of an immediate,
abrupt, and purely despotic kind, which would have
been neutralised or weakened by anything like a
central control. Prompt and blind obedience to the
commands of the saint-superior was the rule of Hy
or lona, and of all the other religious communities
of the West. Perhaps there were even here feuds,

The Early Northern Saints. 381

disputes, and mutinies of which no record has been
preserved. The hagiographer can only commemo-
rate those which were suppressed by some terrible
manifestation of Divine power, for the person whose
life he commemorates is only conventionally and
nominally to be spoken of as a mortal ; he is in
reality superhuman, wielding, whenever he pleases,
the thunderbolts of the Deity, annihilating dissent
and disobedience to himself, as if it were blasphemy
in the Deity's own presence, and crushing by an
immediate miracle any effort to oppose his will,
were it even about the proper hour of setting off on
a journey, or the dinner to be ordered for the day.

The rank which those primitive clergy of Ireland
and the Highlands occupy is almost invariably that
of the saint, a rank as far separated from that which
can be conferred by any human hierarchy as heaven
is from earth. They were, as we have seen, inde-
pendent of Rome from the beginning, and this great
host of saints had lived and left their biographies
to the world long before the system of judicial
canonisation. How a boundary is professed to be
drawn between the genuine and the false among
these saints of the North, cannot be easily under-
stood. No one seems to object -to any of them as
spurious. Many of them are so very obscure that
only faint and fragmentary traces of them can be
found, yet it seems never to be questioned that they
occupied the transcendent spiritual rank usually

382 Book-Club Literature.

attributed to them. Of others nothing is known
but the bare name, yet it is never doubted that
the owner was entitled to his attribute of saint.

The brethren at lona seem sometimes to have
lived well, for we hear of the killing of heifers and
oxen. A pragmatical fellow declines to participate
in the meal permitted on the occasion of a relaxa-
tion of discipline — the saint tells him that since he
refuses good meat at a time when he is permitted to
have it, it is to be his doom to be one of a band of
robbers who will be glad to appease their hunger on
putrid horse-flesh. The ruling spirit, however, of
this first Christian mission, as we find it recorded,
is undoubtedly asceticism. The mortification of
the flesh is the temporal source of spiritual power.
Some incidents occur which put this spirit in a
shape bordering on the ludicrous. A saint is at
a loss to know how his power is waning. There
is some mysterious countervailing influence acting
against him, which manifests itself in the continued
success of an irreverent king or chief, whom he
thought he had taken the proper spiritual methods
to humble. He at last discovers the mystery ; the
king had been fasting against him — entering the
field of asceticism with him, in short, and not with-
out success.

The biography of an Asiatic despot, so far as
other persons are concerned, is merely the history
of his commands and their obedience. It is only

The Early Northern Saints. 383

incidentally, therefore, that one is likely to acquire
any information from it about the people over
whom he rules. In like manner, the life of an Irish
saint is the history of commanding and obeying;
yet a few glimpses of social life may be caught
through occasional chinks. The relation which the
spiritual held towards the temporal powers is suf-
ficiently developed to give ground for considerable
inquiry and criticism. The more eminent of the
saints had great influence in state affairs, ruling in
some measure the monarchs themselves. Some
monarch is occasionally mentioned as the friend
of Columba, much as a bishop might allude to this
or that lay lord as among his personal friends. We
find him settling the succession of Aidan, the king
of the Dalriadic Scots, through an influence to
which any opposition was utterly hopeless. Send
your sons to me, he says to Aidan, and God will
show me who is to be your successor. The sign
falls on Eochoid Buidh, and the saint tells the king
that all his other sons will come to a premature
end, and they drop ofl" accordingly, chiefly in battle.
This power of fixing the evil eye, of prophesying
death, is found in perpetual use among the early
saints. It is their ultimate appeal in strife and
contest, and their instrument of vengeance when
thwarted or affronted ; and a terrible instrument it
must have been. Who could gainsay those believed
to hold in their hands the issues of life and death ?

384 Book-Ctub Literature.

In our conception of the kings with whom these
saints were familiar, it may be well not to be misled
by words. We shall realise them better at the
present day by looking to Madagascar or the Mar-
quesas Islands than among the states of Europe.
The palace was a shanty of log or wattle, protected,
perhaps, by a rampart of earth or uncemented stones,
and the king had a stone chair with a few m5'-stic
decorations scratched on it, which served for his
throne on state occasions. The prospect of acquir-
ing a gold torque or a silver drinking-cup would
have a material influence over his imperial policy.
Were we to believe the fabulous historians, Ireland
was for centuries a compact kingdom under one im-
perial sovereign, who presided over subsidiary rulers
in the provinces. But although sometimes one pro-
vincial king was powerful enough to keep the others
in subjection, old Celtic Ireland never was a king-
dom, properly speaking, for it never had a nation-
ality. Some people maintain, not without reason,
that the facility with which a nationality resolves
itself into existence depends much, not only on
race, but on geological conditions. The Celtic Irish
seem to have always been too busy with local feuds
and rivalries to achieve any broad nationality. And
the nature of their country — a vast plain intersected
by morasses and rivers, and here and there edged
with mountain ranges — is unfavourable to the
growth of a nationality, since it presents no gen-

The Early. Northern Saints. 385

eral centre of defence against a foreign enemy,
like that great central range of mountains in Scot-
land, which Columba's biographers call the Dor-
sum Britannise — the Backbone of Britain. Ireland,
indeed, seems to have had no conception of a
nationality until such a thing was suggested by
the Normans and the Saxons, after they had been
long enough there to feel patriotic. And so it has
generally happened that any alarming outbreaks
against the imperial , government have been led by
people of Norman or Saxon descent.

Still there is, no doubt, difficult as it may be to
realise the idea, that at ; the tinaes with which we
are dealing, Ireland enjoyed a kind of civilisation,
which enabled its princes and its priests to look
down on Pictland, and even on Saxon England, as
barbarian. The, Roman dominion had not pene-
trated among them, but the very remoteness which
kept the island beyond the boundaries of the Em-
pire, alsio kept it beyond the range of the destroyers
of the Empire, and made it in reality the repository
of the vestiges of imperial civilisation in the north.
Perhaps the diiference between the' two^ .grades of
civilisation m.ight be about the same as we could have
found ten years ago between Tahiti and New Zealand.

An extensive and minute- genealogical ramifica-
tion, when it is authentic, is a condition of a pretty
far advanced state of civilisation. Abandoning the
old fabulous genealogies which went back among

2 B

386 Book- Club Literature.

the Biblical patriarchs, the rigid antiquaries of Ire-
land find their way through authentic sources to
genealogical connections of a truly marvellous ex-
tent. Such illustrious men as the saints can, of
course, be easily traced, as all were proud to estab-
lish connection with them ; while Columba him-
self and several others were men of royal descent
But of the casual persons mentioned in the Life of
Columba, Dr Reeves hunts out the genealogy — fully
as successfully, one would say, as that of any per-
son of the country-gentleman class in Britain, living
at the beginning of this century, could be estab-
lished. There are, indeed, many characteristics in
the hagiologic literature bearing an analogy to
modern social habits so close as to be almost
ludicrous ; and it is not easy to deal with these
conditions of a very distant age, brought to us as
they are through the vehicle of a language which is
neither classical nor vernacular, but conventional —
the corrupt Latin in which the biographers of the
saints found it convenient to write. It would appear
that when he was in Ireland, St Columba kept his
carriage, and the loss of the lynch-pin on one oc-
casion is connected with a notable miracle. Dr
Reeves, as appropriate to this, remarks that "the
memoirs of St Patrick in the Book of Armagh
make frequent mention of his chariot, and even
name his driver." It is difficult to suppose such a
vehicle ever becoming available in lona ; but there

The Early Northern Saints. 387

Columba seems to have been provided with abund-
ance of vessels, and he could send for a friend, in
the way in which MacGillicallum's " carriage," in the
form of a boat, was sent for Johnson and BoswelL

There are many other things in these, books
which have a sound more familiar to us than any
sense which they really convey. Here the saint
blesses the store of a "homo plebeius cum uxore
et filiis" — a poor man with a wife and family — a
term expressively known in this day among all who
have to deal with the condition of their fellow-men,
from the chancellor of the exchequer to the reliev-
ing-officer. In the same chapter we are told " de
quodam viro divite tenacissimo "— of a very hard-
fisted rich fellow-^a term thoroughly significant in
civilised times. He is doomed, by the way, to
become bankrupt, and fall into such poverty that
his offspring will be found dead in a ditch — a fate
also intelligible in the nineteenth century. In
another place we have among the saint's suitors
"plebeius pauperrinlius, qui in ea habitabat regione
quae Stagni litoribus Aporici est contermina." The
"Stagnum Aporicum" is Lochaber; so here we
have a pauper from the neighbourhood of Lochaber
— a designation which I take to be familiarly known
at "the Board of Supervision for the Relief of the
Poor in Scotland." We are told, too,, of the saint
being at a plebeian feast, and of a plebeius in the
island of Raghery quarrelling with his wife.

388 Book-Club Literature.

The thoughtful student will find a more distin-
guished analogy with the habits of later civilisation
in the literature of these early churchmen. The
subject of the introduction of letters into Ireland,
and the very early literature of that country, is too
large to be handled here. It is certain that in
Columba's era, the middle of the sixth century,
books were written and used in Ireland. The re-
spect paid to a book in that age was something be-
yond that of the most ardent book-hiinter. Many
of the most exciting of the saintly miracles have
for. their end; the preservation of a book in fire or
in water. The custody of the Book of Armagh,
containing St Patrick's canons, was a great hered-
itary office ; and the princely munificence which
piiovided the book with a suitable case or, shrine
in the tenth century is recorded in Irish history.
Besides their costly shriines already referred to,
these books often had for an outer covering a
bag or satchel, in which the sacred deposit was
carried from place to place. The heart must be
dead to all natural sensations that does not sym-
pathise with Dr Reeves in the following triumphant
announcement : —

"Of leather cases the cover of the Book of
Armagh is the most interesting example now re-
maining. It .came, together, with its inestimable
enclosure, into the writer's possession at the end of
1853, and is now lying before him. It is formed

The Early Northern Saints. 389

of a single piece of strong leather, 36 inches long
and 12 broad, folded in such a way as to form a
six-sided case 12 inches long, 12^ broad, and 254^,
thick, having a flap, which doubles over in front,
and is furnished with a' rude lock and eight staples,
admitted through perforations in the flap, for shdrt
iron rods to enter and meet at the lock. The whole
outer Surface, which has become perfectly black
from age, is covered with figures and interfacings
of the Irish pattern in relief, which appear to have
been produced by subjecting the leather, in a damp
state, before it was folded, to pressure upon' a block
of the whole size, having a depressed pattern, and
allowing it to remain until the impression became
indelible."

A pleasing peculiarity in the personal habits of
these recliises is their frequent communion with
birds and the gentler kind of beasts. Their legend-
ary histories speak of these animals as ipt mediums
of vaticination and miraculous intervention ; but we
must be content, in the present age, to suppose that
their frequent appearance, their familiar intercourse
with the saints, and the quaint and amiable inci-
dents in which they figure, are in reality character-
istic memorials of the kindly feelings and the in-
nocent pursuits natural to men of gentle dispbsition
and retired life. Thus Columba one day gives
directions to a brother to be on the watch at a
certain point in the island of lona, for there, by

390 Book-Club Literature.

nine o'clock on that day, a certain stranger stork
will alight and drop down, utterly fatigued with her
journey across the ocean. That stork the brother
is enjoined to take up gently, and convey to the
nearest house, and feed and tend for three days,
after which she will take wing and fly away to the
sweet spot of her native Ireland, whence she had
wandered. And this the brother is to do because
the bird is a guest from their own beloved native
land. The brother departs, and returns at the
proper time. Columba asks no questions — he
knows what has taken place, and commends the
obedient piety of the brother who had sheltered
and tended the wanderer.

Another saint, Ailbhe, had a different kind of
intercourse with certain cranes. They went about
in a large body, destroying the corn in the neigh-
bourhood, and would not be dispersed. The saint
went and delivered on oration to them on the
unreasonablieness of their conduct, and forthwith,
penitent and somewhat ashamed, they soared into
the air and went their way. " St Cuthbert's ducks "
acquired: a long celebrity. When that reverenced
ascetic went to take up his residence in the wave-
bounded sqlitude of the Fame Islands, he found
the solan-geese there imbued with the wild habits
common to their storm-nurturSd race, and totally
unconscious of. the civilisation and refinement of
their kinsmen who graze on commons, and hiss

The Early Northern Saints. 391

at children and dogs. St Cuthbert tamed them
through his miraculous powers, and made them
as obedient and docile a flock as abbot ever ruled.
The geese went before him in regular platoons,
following the word of command, and doing what
he ordered — whether it might be the most ordinary
act of the feathered biped, or some mighty miracle.
Under his successors their conduct seems to have
been less regular, though certainly not less peculiar ;
for we are told that they built their nests on the
altar, and around the altar, a,nd in all the houses
of the island ; farther, that, during the celebration
of mass, they familiarly pecked the officiating priest
and his assistants with their bills. It is curious
enough that the miraculous education of these birds
makes its appearance in a Scottish legal or official
document at the close of the fifteenth century. It
is an instrument recording an attestation to the
enormous value of the down of these renowned
birds ; and seems, indeed, to be an advertisement
or puff by merchants dealing in the ware, though
its ponderous Latin ity is in curious contrast with
the neat examples of that kind of literature to
which we are accustomed in these days;^

One of the prettiest of the stories about birds is
divided between St Serf, the founder of a monastery
in Loch Leven,' and St Kentigern, the patron of

^ " Instrumentum super Aucis Sancti Guthberti." — Spalding Club.

392 .Book-Club Literature.

Glasgow, where he is better known as St MungOi
Kentigern was one among a parcel of neophyte
boys whom the worthy old Serf, or Servarius, was
perfecting in the knowledge of the truth. Their
teacher had a feathered pet — " quaedam a.vicula quae
vulgo ob ruborem corpusculi rubisca nuncupatur " —
a robin-redbreast, in fact, an animal whose good for-
tune it is never to be mentioned without some
kindly reference to his universal popularity, and
the decoration which renders him so easily recog-
nised wherever he appears. St Serfs, robin was a
wonderful bird ; he not only took food from his
master's hand and pecked about him according to
the fashion of tame and familiar birds, but took a
lively interest in his devotions and studies by flap-
ping his wings arid crowing in his own little way,
so as to be a sort of chorus to the acts of the saint.
The old man enjoyed this extremely ; and his bio-
grapher, with more geniality than hagiographers
usually show, sympathises with this innocent re-
creation, applying the example of the bow that
was not always bent, in a manner suggestive of
suspicions that he was not entirely unacquainted
with profane letters. One day, when the saint
had retired to his devotions, the boys, amu.sed
themselves with his little , pet ; and a struggle
arising among them for its possession, the head
was torn from the body — altogether a natural in-
cident. Thereupon, says the narrator, fear was

The Early Northern Saints. 393

turned to grief, and the avenging birch — " plagas
virgarum quae puerorum gravissima tormenta esse
Solent" — arose terribly in their sight. It was at
this moment that an unpopular pupil, named Ken-
tigern — a new boy, apparently — a stranger who had
not taken in good-fellowship to the rest of the
school, but was addicted to solitary meditation,
entered the guilty conclave. Their course was
taken — they threw the fragments of the bird into
his hands, and bolted. St Serf enters, and the
crew are awaiting in guilty exultation the bursting
of his wrath. The consecrated youth, however,
fitting the severed parts to each other, signs the
crosSj raises- his pure hands to heaven, and breathes
an appropriate prayer — ^when lo ! robin lifts his little
head, -expands his wings, and hops away to meet
his master. In the eucharistic office of St Ken-
tigern's day, this event, ' along with the restoration
to life of a meritorious cook, and other miracles,
inspired a canticle which, for long subsequent ages,
was exultinglysung by the choristers in the saint's
own cathedral of Glasgow, thus : —

" Garrit ales pernecatus.
Cocus est resuscitatus.
Salit vervex trucidatus
Amputate capite."

A bird proper; on the shield argent of the city of
Glasgow; has been identified with the resuscitated pet
of the patron saint. The tree on which it is there

394 Book-Club Literature.

perched is a commemoration of .another of the
saint's miracles. In a time of frost and snow his
enemies had extinguished his fire ; but immediately-
drawing on the miraculous resources ever at the
command of his class on such emergencies, he
breathed fire into a frozen branch from the forest ;
and it was centuries afterwards attested that the
green branches of that forest made excellent fire-
wood.

Another element in the blazon of the Venice of
the west is a fish, laid across the stem of the tree,
"in base," as the heralds say, but not, as generally
depicted, conformable either to their science or that
of the ichthyologist. This fish holds in its mouth
something like a dish- — ^in reality a ring — and thus
commemorates a miraculous feat of the same saint,
which has found its: way into the romances of the
juvenile portion of the reading public, where it is a
standard nuisance. Queen Cadyow, whose conduct
was of such a character that it is wonderful how
any respectable saint could have prevailed on him-
self to serve her, gives her bridal ring to a paramour.
Her husband lures the rival away to the bank of
the Clyde, to sleep after the fatigues of the chase,
and there, furtively removing the ring, pitches it
into the river. The reader knows the result by
instinct. St .' Kentigerh, appealed to, directs the
first salmon that can be caught in the Clyde to be
opened, and there, of course, is the ring in the

The Early Northern Saints. 395

stomach. This miracle is as common in the " Acta
Sanctorum " as in the juvenile romances. It served
St Nathalan in such a manner as to preclude the
supposition that the saint had invoked it on the
occasion. He locked himself into iron chains, and
threw their key into the river Dee, in order that he
might be unable to open the fetterlock before he
had made a pilgrimage to the tombs of St Peter
and St Paul ; but the water did its duty, and re-
stored the key in the stomach of a fish.

We have naturally many fishing anecdotes con-
nected with the northern saints. Columba is de-
scribed as out a-fishing one day with a parcel of his
disciples, who are characterised as "strenui pisca-
tores," a term which would be highly applicable to
many a Waltonian of the present day. The saint;
desirous of affording them a pleasant surprise, di-
rects them to cast their net where a wonderful fish
was prepared for them ; and they drag out an
'■ esox " (whatever that may mean) of wonderful
size.

Some of the inhabitants of the deep familiar, to
these saints were animals of a formidable kind.
Columba and a band of his disciples are going to
cross the river Ness, when they, meet. those, who
bear on their shoulders the body of one whoj endea-
vouring to swim across the same river, had been
bitten to death by a monster of the deep. The
saint, in the face of this, gloomy procession, re-

396 Book-Club Literature.

quires that one of his disciples shall swim across
the Ness, and bring over a boat which is on the
other side. A disciple named Mocumin, whom the
saint had miraculously cured of z. bleeding of the
nose, confident in the protecting power of his mas-
ter, pulls off all his clothes save his tunica (what-
ever that may be — coat, kilt, or leathern shirt), and
takes to the water. The monster, who is reposing
deep down in the stillness of the profoundest pool,
hears the stir of the water above, and is seen to rise
with a splash on the surface, and make with dis-
tended jaws for the swimmer. ' The saint, of course,
orders the beast back just at the moment when all
seemed over, and is instantly obeyed. The charac-
teristics of the monster could not be more closely
identical with those of the crocodile or alligator, had
the incident been narrated in Egypt or America.

Adventures with such monsters in our northern
waters supply many of the triuniphs attributed to
the saints. St Colman of Drumore actually ex-
tracted a young girl alive from the stomach of an
" aquetalis bestia." She had been swallowed while
standing on the edge of a lake, "camisiam suam
lavantem " — washing her cheihise, poor simple soul.
St Molua saw a monster, of the size of a large boat,
in pursuit of two boys swimming unconscious of
danger in a lake in 'the county of Monaghan. He
showed good worldly sense and presence of mind
on the occasion ; for, instead of alarming them with

The Early Northern Saints. 397

an announcement of their perilous condition, he
called out to them to try a race and see which
would reach the bank first. The beast, balked of
his prey, took in good part an admonition by the
saint, and returned no more to frighten boys.

From fishes and aquatic monsters the law of asso-
ciation naturally leads us to the waters themselves.
There are throughout the United Kingdom multi-
tudes of wells, still bearing the names of the saints
to whom they were dedicated. The legends of
miracles performed by their waters, through the
intercession of their special saints, are countless.
It is, perhaps, because cures effected by the use
of waters may be accounted for otherwise , than by
supernatural intervention, that modern writers of
the old faith speak with less reserve of the miracles
at fountains than of the others they have to record,
and even bring them down to modern times. Many
of them may be found recorded in his usual slip-
shod manner in the amiable pages of Butler — as,
for instance, in the life of St Winfrid (November
3), where we are told how " Roger Whetstone, a
Quaker, near Bromsgrove, by bathing at Holywell,
was cured of an inveterate lameness and palsy by
which he was converted to the Catholic faith."
Some of the old saints' wells, remote from cities
and advanced opinions, are still haunted by people
who believe them to be endbw/ed with supernatural
healing virtues. It is in Romish Ireland, of course,

398 Book-Club Literature.

that this beUef has its most legitimate seat ; but
even in the most orthodoxly-Presbyterian districts
of Scotland, a lingering dubious trust in the healing
virtues of sanctified fountains has given much per-
plexity to the clergy.

Some of these fountains are in caverns, and if in
any one of these the well falls into a rude-hewn
basin like a font, we may be sure that a hermit
frequented the cave, and that it was the place of
worship of early converts. Such a cave was the
hiding-place, after the '45, of the worthy single-
minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the
Baron of Bradwardine. It is entered by a small
orifice like a fox's hole, in the face of the rugged
cliffs which front the German Ocean near Troup-
head. Gradually it rises to a noble arched cavern,
at the end of which is the font cut into the stone,
where it would catch the outpourings of a small
spring. When I saw it long years ago, it was
filled with clear living water, which, save when it
had been the frugal drink of the poor Jacobite
refugee, had probably been scarcely disturbed since
the early day when heathen men and women went
thither to throw off their idolatry and enter the
pale of Christendom. The unnoticeable smallness
of many of these consecrated wells makes their very
reminiscence and still semi-sacred character all the
more remarkable. The stranger in Ireland or the
Highlands of Scotland hears rumours of a distin-

The Early Northern Saints. 399

guished well miles on miles off. He thinks he
will find an ancient edifice over it, or some other
conspicuous adjunct. Nothing of the kind — he has
been lured all that distance over rock and bog to
see a tiny spring bubbling out of the rock, such
as he may see hundreds of in a tolerable walk
any day. Yet, if he search in old topographical
authorities,; he will find that the little well has
ever been an important feature of the district —
that, century after century, it has been unforgotten ;
and, with diligence, he may perhaps trace it to some
incident in the life of the saint, dead more than
1200 years ago, whose name it bears. Highlanders
still make pilgrimages to drink the waters of such
fountains, which they judiciously mix with the other
aqua to which they are attached. They sometimes
mimic the spirit of the old pilgrimage, by leaving
behind them an offering at the fountain. I have
seen such offerings by the brink of remote High-
land springs, as well as in Ireland. The market
value of them would not afford an alarming esti-
mate of the intensity of the superstition still linger-
ing in this form in the land. The logic of the
depositors probably suggests, that the spiritual
guardians of the fountain, though amenable to
flattery and propitiation by gift, are not really
well informed about the market value of worldly
chattels, and are easily put off with rubbish.
A historical inquiry into the worship or consecra-

4O0 Bdok-Club Literature.

tion of wells and other waters would be interesting.
In countries near the tropics, where sandy deserts
prevail, a well must ever have been a thing of mo-
mentous importance ; and we find among the tribes
of Israel the digging down a well spoken of as the
climax of reckless, heartless, and awful desttuctive-
ness. To find, however, how in watery Ireland and
Scotland a mere dribblet of the element so generally
abounding should have been an object of veneration
for centuries, we must look to something beyond
physical wants and their supply.

The principal cause of the sanctification of springs
must, of coiirse, be explained by the first of Chris-
tian ordinances. The spring close by the dwelling
or cell of the saint — the spring on account of which
he probably, selected the centre of his mission — had
not only washed the forefsithers of the district from
the stain of primeval heathenism, but had applied
the visible ■ 'sign by which all, from generation to
generation, had been admitted into the bosorti' of
the Church. This might seem to aiford a cause
sufficient in itself for the eiffect, yet it appears to
have beeh aided by other caused more recondite
and mysterious. Notwithstanding' all the trash
talked about Druids and other persons of this
kind, we know extremely little of the heathenism
of the British Isles. The little that we do know
is learned from the meagre notices which the biog-
raphers of the saints have furnished of that which

The Early Northern Saints. 401

the saints superseded. It is not their function to
commemorate the abominations of heathenism ;
they, would rather bury it in eternal oblivion —
premat nox alia — but they cannot entirely tell the
triumphs of their spiritual heroes without some
reference, however faint, to the conquered enemies.
The earliest recorded conflicts between the new
and the old creed are connected with fountains. In
one page of the Life of Columba we find the saint,
on a child being brought to him for baptism, in a
desert place where no water was, striking the rock
like Moses, and drawing forth a rill, which remained
in perennial existence — a fountain su;rrounded by a
special sanctity. In the next page he deals with a
well in the hands of the Magi. They had put a
demon of theirs into it to such effect, that any
unfortunate person washing hinjself in the well or
drinking of its water, was forthwith stricken with
paralysis, or leprosiy, or blindness of an eye, or some
other corporeal calamity. The malignant powers
with which they had inspired this .foi;midable well
spread fap around the fear of the Magi, and conse-
quently their influence. But the Christian mission-
aries were to show a power of a different kind — a
power of beneficence, excelling and destroying the
power of ' malignity. The process adopted , is fully
described. The saint^ after, a suitable invocation,
washed his hands and feet in 'the water, and then
drank of it with his disciples. Thp Magi looked

2 c

402 Boek-Club Literature.

on with a malignant smile to see the accursed well
produce its usual effect; but the saint and his fol-
lowers came away uninjured : the demon was driven
out of the well, and it became ever afterwards a
holy fountain, curing many of their infirmities.
Another miracle, bearing against the Magi, intro-
duces us to one of their number by name, and
gives a little of his domestic history. His name
is Broichan, and he is ' tutor to Brud, king of the
Picts, with whom he dwells on the banks of the
Ness. It might have relieved the mind of the
historical inquirer to be told that Brud built for
himself the remarkable vitrified fort of Craig-
Phadric, which rises high above the Ness, and to
be informed of the manner in which its calcined
rampart was constructed ; but nothing is said on
the subject, and Craig-Phadric stands on its own
isolated merits, still to be guessed at, without one
tangible word out of record or history to help any
theory! about its object or construction home to a
conclusion. One is free, however, to imagine Brud,
the heathen king of the' Picts, living on the scarped
top of the hill, in a lodging of wattled or wooden
houses, surrounded by a rampart of stones fused
by fire, as the only cement then known. Such we
may suppose to havd: been the "domus fegia,"
whence the saint walked out in a very bad humour
to the river Ness, from the pebbles of which he
selected one white stone, to be turned to an im-

The Early Northern Saints. 403

portant use. Broichan, the Magus, had in his pos-
session a female slave from Ireland. Columba, who
seems to have held with him such intercourse as
a missionary to the Chocktaws might have with
a great medicine - man, desired that the Magus
should manumit the woman, for what reason we
are not distinctly told ; but it is easy to suppose
strong grounds for intervention when a Christian
missionary finds a woman, of his own country and
creed, the slave of a heathen priest. Columba's
request was refused. Losing patience, he had
resort to threats ; and at length, driven to his ulti-
matum, he denounced death to Broichan if the slave
were not released before his own return to Ireland.
Columba told his disciples to expect two messen-
gers to come from the, king to tell of the sudden
and critical illness of Broichan. The messengers
rushed in immediately after to claim the saint's
intervention. Broichan had been suddenly stricken
by an angel sent for the purpose; and as if he had
been taking his dram in a modern gin-palace^ we
are told that the drinking-glass, or glass drinking-
vessel, "vitrea bibera," which he was conveying to
his lips, was smashed in pieces, and he himself
seized with deadly sickness. Columba sends the
consecrated pebble,^ with a prescription that the
water in which it is dipped is to be drunk.
If, before he drinks, Broichan releases his slave,
he is to recover ; if not^ he dies- The Magus com- l

404 Book-Club Literature.

plies, and is saved. The consecrated stone, which
had the quality of floating in water like a nut,
was afterwards, as we are told, preserved in the
treasury of the king of the Picts. It has been lost to
the world, along with the saint's white robe and his
consecrated banner, both of which performed mir-
acles after his death. But the sanitary influence
attributed to the water in which consecrated stones
have been dipped, is a superstition scarcely yet up-
rooted in Scotland.

Sertnona m StoitEg.

NE of the clubs has lately deviated from
the printing of letterpress, which is the
established function of clubs, into pic-
torial art. As it threatens to repeat
the act on a larger scale, it is proposed to take a
glance at the result already afforded, in order that
it may be seen whether it is a failure, or a success
opening up a new vein for club enterprise. In dis-
tributing a set of pictorial prints arhong its mem-
bers, the club in question may be supposed .to have
invaded the art-unions : but its course is in another
direction, since its pictures are entirely subservient
to archaeology. The innovator in question is the
Spalding Club, which has already distributed among
its adherents a collection of portraits of the sculp-

Sermons in Stones. 405

tured stones in Scotland, and now proposes to do
the same by the early architectural remains of the
north. In giving effect to such a design, it will
produce something like Dugdale's Monasticon and
the great English county histories.

If that which is to be done shall rival that which
the club has achieved, it will be worthy of all
honour. No one can open the book of The Sculp-
tured Stones without being almost overwhelmed
with astonishment at the reflection that they are
not monuments excavated in Egypt, or Syria, or
Mexico, but have stood before the light of day in
village churchyards, or in marketplaces, or by way-
sides throughout our own country. As you pass
on, the eye becomes almost tired with the endless
succession of grim and ghastly human figures — of
distorted limbs — of preternatural beasts, birds, and
fishes — of dragons, centaurs, and intertwined snakes
— of uncouth vehicles, and warlike instruments, and
mystic - looking symbols — of chains of interlaced
knots and complex zigzags, all so crowding on
each other that the tired eye feels as if it had run
through a procession of Temptations of St Anthony
or Faust Sabbaths. When this field of investiga-
tion and speculation is surveyed in all its affluence,
one is not surprised to find that it has been taken
in hand by a race of bold guessers, who, by the
skilful appliance of a jingling jargon of Asiatic,
Celtic, and classical phraseology, make nonsense

406 Book^Club Literature.

sound like learning too deep to be fathomed. So,
while Rusticus will point out to you "the auld-
fashioned standin' stane" — on which he tells you
that there are plain to be seen a cocked hat, a pair
of spectacles, a comb, a looking-glass, a sow with
a long snout, and a man driving a gig, — Mr Urban
will describe to you " a hieroglyphed monolith " in
the terms following : —

" The Buddhist triad is conspicuously symbolised
by wha:t the peasantry call a pair of spectacles. It
consists of two circles, of which the one, having its
radius i^ inch wider than the other, is evidently
Buddha, the spiritual or divine intellectual essence
of the world, or the efficient underived source of
all; the other is Dharma, the material essence of
the world— the plastic derivative cause. The, liga-
men connecting them together, completes the sacred
triad with the Sangha derived from and '■ composed
of the two others. Here, therefore, is symbolised
the collective energy of spirit and matter in the
state of action, or the embryotic creation, the type
and sum of all specific forms, spotltaneously evolved
from the union of Buddha and Bharma. The cres-
cent, likened by the vulgar-minded peasantry: to a
cocked hat, is the embodiment of the all-J)ervading
•celestial influence ; and the decorated sceptres or
sacred wands of office, laid across it at the mystic
angle of forty-five degrees, represent the compre-
hensive discipline and cosrnopolite authority of the

Sermons in Stones. 407

conquering Sarsaswete. The figure of the elephant
— undoubted evidence of the oriental origin of this
monoglyph^ — represents the embryo of organised
matter ; while in the chariot of the sun the never-
dying Inis na Bhfiodhlhadth threads the sacred
labyrinth, waving a branch of the Mimosa serisha,
which has been dipped in a sacred river, and dried
beneath the influence of Osiris. The figures called
a comb and a looking-glass are the lingal emblems
of the sacred Phallic worship. The whole hiero-
graph thus combines, in an extremely simple, and
instructive unity, the symbolisation of Apis, Osiris,
Uphon, and Isis, Pha:llos, Pater ^ther, and Mater
Terra, Lingam and Yoni, Vishnu, Brama, and Sar-
saswete, with their Saktes, Yang and Yiri, Padwa-
devi, Viltzli-pultzli, Baal, Dhanandarah, Sulivahna
•and Mumbo Jumbo."

The honest transcripts in the club book clear
away: a great deal of that unknown which is so
convertible into the magnificent. It was extremely
perplexing to understand that the elephant was
^profusely represented upon memorials familiar to
the eyes of the inhabitants of Scotland, at a period,
if we might credit some theories, anterior to the
time when ; Roman soldiers were appalled in the
Punic war by the^ sudden apparition of unknown
animals of monstrous size and preternatural strength.
The whole flobd of 1 oriental theory was let; loose by
this evidence: of familiarity #ith the usages of Hin-

4o8 Book-Club Literature.

dostan^ But it is pretty evident, when we inspect
him closely, that the animal, though a strange beast
of some peculiar conventional type, is no elephant.
That spiral winding-up of his snout, which passed
for a trunk, is a characteristic refuge of embryo art,
repeated upon other parts of the animal. It is neces-
sitated by the difficulty which a primitive artist feels
in bringing out the form of an extremity, whatever
it may be — snout, horn, or hoof He finds that the
easiest termination he can make is a- whirl, and he
makes it accordingly. Thus the noses, the tails,
the feet of the characteristic monster of the sculp-
tured stones, all end in a whirl, as the final letter
of an accomplishe*d and dashing penman ends in a
flourish. The same difficulty is met in repeated
instances on these stones by another ingenious re-
source. Animals are united or twined together by
noses or tails, to enable the artist to escape the
difficulty of executing the extremities of each sep-
arately.

There is a propensity to believe that whatever is
old must have something holy and mysterious about
it. It is difficult to suppose that, in making an
ornament, men who would be so venerable, were
they alive now, as our ancestors of many centuries
ago, can have been in the slightest degree affected
by the pomps and vanities of this wicked world.
Hence there is never a quaint Gothic decoration,
floral or animal, but it must be symbolic of some

Sermons in Stones. 409

great mystery. So the reticulated and geometrical
tracery on the sculptured stones has been invested
with mythic attributes, under such names as "the
Runic Knot." It has been counted symbolical of
a mysterious worship or creed, and has been asso-
ciated with Druids and other respectable, but not
very palpable, personages.^

Good theories are such a rarity in the antiquarian
world, that it is a luxury to find one which, in refer-
ence to this sort of decoration, merits that character.
The buildings, both ecclesiastical and civil, of the
early Christians of the North were, as we have seen,
made of wattles or wicker-ware. The skill, there-
fore, of the architectural decorator took the direction
of the variations in basket-work. We know that in
the Gothic age those forms which were found the
most endurable and graceful in which stone could
be placed upon stone, became also the ruling forms
which guided the carver and the painter ; so that all
wood-work, metal-work, seal-cutting, illumination
of books, and the like, repeated the ornaments of

^ It would not be difficult to trace a resemblance between some of
the exceedingly elaborate sculpture of the New Zealanders and that
of the sculptured stones, especially in the instance of the very hand-
some country-house of the chief Rangihaetita, represented in Mr
Angas's New Zealanders Illustrated. Its name, by the way, in the
native Maori, is Kai Tangata, or Eat-man House— so called, doubt-
less, in commemoration of the many jolly feasts held in it, on mis-
sionaries and others coming within Wordsworth's description of

"A being not too wise and good
For human nature's daily food."

4IO Book-Club Literature.

Gothic architecture. It would only, then, be a pro-
totype of an established phenomenon were it to be
found that the sculptor of an earlier age adopted
the decorations developed by the skilful platting of
withes or wattles ; and accordingly, this is just the
character of the platted ornaments so prevalent on
the sculptured stones.^ But, however these may
have been istiggested, they show the work of the
undoubted artist, and furnish, as the advertisements
say, " a varied assortment of the most elegant and
attractive patterns."

Every one who in future attempts to unravel the
mystery of these primitive sculptures must not only
in gratitude but in common justice pay homage to
the services of Mr John Stuart, the secretary of the
Antiquai'ies' Society of Scotland, to whose learning
and zeal he owes the; collective means of examining
them. It will interest many to know that Mr
Stuart has been at work again, and has a second
collection of transcripts, . in some respects even
more instructive than the first. These will show,
for instance, the point of junction between the
sculptures of the East and of the West, which, in
their extreme special features, are widely unlike
each other.

' 1 See "An Attempt to Explain the Origin and Meaning of the
Early" 'Interlaced' Ornamentation found on the Ancient Sculptured
Stones of Scotland, Ireland, and the Isle of Man, by Gilbert J.
French of Bolton. " ' Privately printed.

Sermons in Stones. 411

In the mean time, as the. reader is perhaps tired
of all this talk about books, and I would fain part
with, him in good humour, I venture to, take him
on an imaginary ramble in the wilds of Argyll-
shire, in search of specimens of ancient native
sculpturej that he may have an opportunity of
noticing how much has yet to be gleaned off this
stony field. So we are off together, on a fresh
summer morning, along the banks of the Crinan
Canal, until we reach the road which turns south-
ward to Loch Swin and Taivalich. After ascend-
ing so far, we strike off by a scarcely discernible
track, and climb upwards among the curiously
broken mountains of South Knapdale. When we
are high enough up we look on the other side of
the first ridge, and see the brown heather dappled
with tiny lakes, looking like molten silver dropped
into their hollows ; while far below, one of the
countless branches of Loch Swin winds through a
narrow inlet, among rocks cushioned to the water's
edge with deep ' green foliage. We are not to de-
scend to the region of lake and woodland, betrayed
by this glimpse, but' to keep the wilder upland ;
and at last, in a secluded hollow near the small
tarn called Lochcolissor, we reach a deserted vil-
lage — a collection of roofless stone houses, looking,
if one judged from mere externals, as if they might
in their early days ,have given shelter to Columba
or Oran. In the centre of this group of domestic

412 Book-Club Literature.

ruins is an affluent fountain of the clearest water.
Standing over it is the object of our search — a tall,
grey, profusely -lichened stone. At first it seems
amorphous, as geologists say ; but a closer view
discloses on the one side a cross incised, on the
other a network of floral decorations in relief. To
trace these in their completeness, it would be neces-
sary to accomplish the not easy task of removing
the coating of lichen-; and, by the way, if adepts
in the cryptogamic department of botany shall
succeed in finding a test of the precise age of those
lichens, which they believe they have proved to be
the growth of centuries, a key of the most valuable
kind will be obtained for discovering the age of
stone monuments.^

Turn now in another direction. At the head of
Loch Fyne, near Dunderar, the grim tower of the
Macnaughtons— which, from some decorations on
it, looks hugely like as if it had been built in the
seventeenth century with the stones of an old
church — we find a tuft of trees with a dyke round
it, called Kilmorich. It is a graveyard evidently,
though it may not have been recently opened ; the
surface is uneven, and several rough stones, which

^ Any one who desires to see the extent to which science can find
employment in this arid-looking corner of organic life, may look at a
"Memoir on the Spermogones and Pycnides of Filamentous, Fruti-
culose, and Foliaceous Lichens," by Dr William Lauder Lindsay, in
the 22d volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin-
burgh.

Sermons in Stones. 4 1 3

may have been placed there at any time, stick
through the earth. These, after a deliberate in-
spection, are found to have nothing of a sculptural
character. But a small piece of rounded stone ap-
pears above the grass, and a little grubbing dis-
closes a font, faintly decorated with some primitive
fluting, on which a stone-mason would look with
much scorn, and a scratching of a galley, the sym-
bol of the Argyll family, or some other of the races
descended from ancient sea-kings. This gives en-
couragement, and a sharper glance around betrays
a singular-looking rounded headstone, in which are
two crescent-shaped holes. There are correspond-
ing holes on the portion under the sod, which thus
completes the rounded head of an ancient Scoto-
Irish cross. The next point is to find the shaft —
it lies not far off, deep in the turf And when we
take the grass and moss from its face, it discloses
some extremely curious quadrilateral decorations,
quite peculiar^ and not in conformity with any type
of form which would enable its date to be guessed
at within a century or two of the reality.

Passing through the rich woods of Ardkinglas, in
a few miles we reach the burying-ground; called of
old Kilmaglas, but now the well-kept churchyard,
in which stands the modern church of Strachur.
There are many who will remember the white
house glimmering through the trees, and lament
that memory is now all that it contains for them.

414 Book-Club Literature.

Here are several curious specimens of sculpture.
Some stones, not of the oldest type, have the:
crossed sword, symbolical alike of the warrior
character of the dead and the religion of peace
in which he rests. There is one with a figure
in full chain-armour ; and others, again, of an older
date, ornamented with the geometric reticulations
already discussed. Descending a few miles farther,
in the small fertile delta of the Lachlan, and over-
shadowed almost by the old square castle of the
M'Lachlans, there is a bushy enclosure which may
be identified as the old burial-place of Kilmory.
A large block of hewn stone, with a square hole in
it, sets one in search of the cross of which it was the
socket. This is found in the grass, sadly mutilated,
but can be recognised by the stumps of the branches
which once exfoliated into its circular head. Beside
it lies a flat stone, on which a sword is surrounded
by graceful floral sculpture.

Let us cross over again to the valley perforated
by Loch Crinan. Northward of the canal there
is a remarkable alluvial district, through which,
although it seems crowded with steep mountain
summits, one can travel over many a mile of level
turf From this soil the hills and rocks rise with
extreme abruptness, in ridges at the border of the
plain, and in isolated peaks here and there through-
out its flat alluvial surface. Conspicuous, in a
minor degree, is a great barrow like a pyramid,

Sermons in Stones, 41 5

with a chamber roofed with long stones in its
centre. Near it is one of those circles of rough
stones called Druidical, and farther on there is
another, and then another ; some of them tall pil-
lars, others merely peeping above ground. They
literally people the plain. This must have been a
busy neighbourhood, whatever sort of work it may
have been that went on around these untooled
fragments of the living rock, which have so dis-
tracted our antiquaries in later centuries. If they
were the means or the object of any kind of
heathen worship, then the existence close beside
them of the vestiges of early Christianity may be
set down as an illustration of the well-known his-
torical opinion, that the first Christian missionaries,
instead of breaking the idols and reviling the super-
stitions of those whom thgy went to convert, pro-
fessed to bring a new sanctity to their sacred places,
and endeavoured to turn their impure faith, with
the least possible violence, into the path of purity.

Our next trial is at Kilmichael, about three miles
from Loch Gilp. The churchyard is extremely?
fruitful in sculptured stones of various kinds —
some floral, others geometrical, with wild beasts,
monsters, and human figures. One of them was
pointed out as the tomb of a member of the house
of Campbell, who bore the naOie of Thomas, and
was a great bard, and lived in London and other
great cities — Thomas Campbell, in short. It seems

41 6 BoohrClub Literature.

to be true that his ancestors were buried in Kil-
michael churchyard, but my informant seemed to
struggle with an idea that the stone covered with
the sculpture of a far-past century had been really
raised to his honour. The next generation will
probably assert this as a fact. The genesis of
such traditions is curious. The stone called Rob
Roy's tomb, which lies beside an ancient font in
the churchyard of Balquhidder, is a sculptured
stone raised for some one who had probably died
in wealth and honour hundreds of years before
Rob stole cattle.

By a slight ascent westward of the alluvial plain
we reach Kilmartin, a village with a large modern
church. Its graveyard is ; graced with many sculp-
tured stones^twenty- five may be counted, con-
spicuous for their rich carving and excellent pre-
servation. On one or two of the latest in date,
there are knightly figures clad in chain-mail. A
local antiquary could probably trace these home to
some worshipful families in the neighbourhood,, but
there are others beyond the i infancy of the oldest
authentic pedigrees. While the stones in the east-
ern counties are all of extremely remote antiquity,
offering no link of connection with later times,
these Highland specimens seem to carry their pecu-
liarities with modified variations through several
centuries into times comparatively late. There are
among them stones bearing some types of extreme

Sermons in Stones. 417

antiquity, and others which undoubtedly proclaim
themselves as no older than the fifteenth or six-
teenth centuries. It is sometimes a difficult task,
in judging of antiquities, to make a sufficient allow-
ance for the spirit of imitation. There is nothing
certainly more natural than that a new tombstone
should be made after the fashion of time-honoured
monuments, the pride of the graveyard in which it
is to be placed. In Kilmartin there are two decided
imitations of the more ancient class of the western
sculptured stones. Though the symbols and deco-
rations which they bear are of ancient outline, the
heavy, and at the same time accurate and workman-
like, way in which they are cut, would mark them
indubitably as modern, even if the one did not bear
the date of 1707, and the other of 17 11.

But the sun is dropping behind Ben Cruachan
and the Jura hills. The time of holiday reading
and holiday rambling has come to its end ; and a
voice calls the wanderer back to more sedate and
methodical pursuits.

2 D

INDEX.

Aberdeen laird, an, described by

his wife, lo et seq.
Adams, Dr Francis, an eminent

Greek scholar^ 264 et seq.
Adventures of Saints, 396, 397.
Advertisements, reading of, 156 et

seq. — curious historical interest

of, 160 et seq.
Aidan and Columba, 383.
Ailbhe, St, and the cranes, 390.'
Aibania, a poem^ reprinted by I^y-

den, ig6.
Alexandrian Library, destruction

of, by fire, 211. •

Almanacs, as affording profitable

reading, 155 et seq.
Amateur book-hunters, 106 et seq.
Ambrosian Library, the, at Milan,

198.
American collections dealing with

early American history, 189 et

seq.
Americans duplicating old Euro-
pean Libraries, 174 — in relatibn

to art and letters, ib. — combating

for rarities, 17s — ransacking and

anatomising private collections,

178. ' ' ; • ' '
Ancient ' literature, considerable

amount of, lost, 324.

Angelo Mai of the Vatican, 229 —
recovery by him of Institute of
Gaius, 326.

Annotating of boolis a crime and
a virtue, 185 et seq.

Antiquarianism known as archae-
ology. 3-

Architecture, Church, of the early
British Christians, 372.

Ardsnischen, Pastor of, buying a
Greek New Testament, 60.

Armagh, Book of, 388 et seq.

Assessed Taxes Department in re-
lation to decay of libraries, 192.

Astor, John Jacob, the bequest of,
174.

Astorian' Library, wealth of the,
176 et seq.

Atticus as a dealer and capitalist
publisher, 108 note.

Attorneys in Norwich, in Norfolk,
and in Suif0lk,'i4i etseq.

Auchinleck Press, account Of, 294
et seq. '''

Auctioneers : Carfrae, '60 et seq. —
Evans, 93 et seq. — anecdote of a
Cockney auctioneer, 178.

Auction -haunter different from
prdwler, 88 et seq.

Authors and compositors, 77 etseq.

420

Index.

Bacon commending brevity of old
Scots Acts, 146.

Bailiff, the, and the writ, 136 note.

Baillet, Adrian, librarian and au-
thor of Jugemens des Savans',
230 et seq.

Ballad fabricating, .306;-- :'.-/.-■- .'

Bannatyne Club, 284 eiseg. — Scott's
song for festivities of, 285.

Barclay, Colonel, a Quaker, anec-
dote of, 9 note.

Bargain hunters and their leanings,
162.

Baskerville, the Birmingham prin-
ter, inaccuracy of, 67.

Bede on the Saints, 379.

Bentham, words in one sentence of
an Act of Parliament couijted by,
144. ■-•- - -

Bethune, Rev. Dr, Waltonian Lib-
rary of, 87 et seq.

Bible, inaccurate editions of, 67 et
seq. — old editions comparatively
numerous, 218.

Bibliognoste, definition of, 5 note.

Bibliographe, definition of,. 5 natu

Bibliographers,, function of, a cruel
one, 237 et seq. — victiinising each
other, 242... •, ,.j : ■> , ; M

Bibliographical Qe.cameroni vari-
ous quotations, from, 93, 294 et .
seq.

Bibl,iQgr;ajphies,.i233 et seq. — on
special subjects, 23s — those de-
voted to the best books, 239.

Bibliomane, definition of, 5.

Bibliomania a. diseajse, 13.

" Bibliqmania," Dibdin's, quotas-
tions from, 18.— Ferriar,'s, quota-
tion from, 86,. 87 note. . , . . ■

Bibliophile, definition of, S-

Bibliotaphe, , deSnitjon of, 1 5, .

Bibliothbque bleue, anecdote con-
nected with the, 50.

Bibliuguiancie discussed by Peig-
not, 220..

" Bill-bopks " of compositors, .79
et seq. ,,,■, ■>,,,;■. .,' '

Binders, famous, 28.

Bindings,, "Inchrple" Brewer's loy«. .
of, 28r-bindings as rplics, 30.

Boccaccio, editip prificeps^ of, 91^
cause of its extreme rarity, 92 —
sold at the Roxburghe Library
sale, ^i,et seq.

Bodleian Library, origin of, 198.

Bohemian of literature, 108 et seq.

Bohun, Edmond, a Jacobite and
last English licenser, 208.

Bollandus, his great work on the
Saints, 353 «' ■!■«?• — the persistent
labours of his successors, 356.

Book-caterers, 20 et seq.

Book-clubs, 243 et seq. — their struc-
ture, 251 — advantages of, 255 et
seq. — confining their attention to
books of non-members, 257 — the
Sydenham Club, 265 — the Rox-
burghe Club, ib. et seq., &c. — •
their gradual growth, 266 et seq.
— Dibdin's description of the
origin of the Roxburghe Club,
267^ — their secrecy, 271 — the Ban-
natyne Club, 284 et seq. — book-
club men, ib. et seq. — character
of their editors, 307, 315 — value
of such clubs to history, 309 —
their literature, 311 — Camden
Club, i^.— Chetham Club, 312
— Surtees Club, ib. — Maitland
Club,, . ibi.. ^— Spalding Club, ib.
— Irish Archaeological and other
Clubs, ii. et seq. — purity of text
of book-club literature, and con-
sequent historical value, 322 et .
\s,eq., 327 — as art unions, 404 et
:seq. -

Book-hunters as creators of lib-
raries, 168 et seq., 197 — as pre-
servers of literature, 205 et seq. —
-as. ichijffmiers, 219 — as discover-
ers of valuable and curious books,
2247rraS'J)bi;arians, 227 et seq. —
their clubs, 243 et seq. — various
.titles of^ $■ S — ^vision, of mighty
book-hunters, 14 — book-hunters
as bibliothaptes and bibliolytes,
54 et j«y.-T-classification of, 64
et seq. — as Rubricists, 63 — as
I aspirants after large paper copies,
,86— their place in. the dispensa-
tions of Providence, loi et seq. —
-tljB.harmlessness and advantages
of : their, , disease, 102 et seq. —
■book-hunters and dealers, 104 —
:in.relatiOA,to other hobby-riders,
,IQS:tt tlwar lack ,of mercenary
spirit, ib. et seq. — in the amateur
phase; 106 ^t seq.. — their freedom
from low company, 109 — their

Index.

42-1

intellefitual advafitages, ib. et
seq. — from ^iheir pursuit readers
and scholars, 114 — their delight
in a new toy, 123.

Books, annotating of, a 6rime and
a virtue, 185 «i je^.^^their decay
from natural causes, mi et seq.
— books, large and solid, factors
in the acquisition of fame, 215 —
such only fitted for authors knd
students, 1252^ — books, small and
fragile, preserved by boiBfe-'hun-
ters, 215-T^rarity of old ''school-
books, ii. et seq. — impoi:tance
of amy kind of lOld books, 817-^
rare books printed by early Eng-
lish printers, 218 et seq. — Uavid
Clement on rare books, 224 et
seq. — ratebooks not always rare,
22s — books as introducers of
books, 233-=— reproduction of old
and rare books by book-cliibs,
246 et seq. — books used in Ire-
land in sixth century, 388. ' '

Boswell, Sir Alexander, as !a book-
club man, 292 et seq. — his- re-

- prints, 293 — his Auchinleck Press,
294 — his character and wsKings,
29s et seq.

Botfield, Beriah, his^ork, vj^fiote.

Bourdaloue, favourite reading of,
112.

Brewer, " inchnale,'* as a mighty
book-hunter, 25 et je^.— origin
t)f 1:113 inanae, 'a6— his love of bind-
ings, 28— his satellites, 31 et^eq.

Bijtish Museum, deposits of books
in, 194 note^origin of library,
197 et seq,

Brunet as an "Inchruler," 26 —
his description of an Elzevir
Ccesar, id. note.

Buckle, historical researches of,

342-
"Bulls," Irish, in 'unlikely books,

132 et seq. — specimen of an index

"bull," 133. ' 1 •
Burton, Mr, private library of, 182

■et seq,

Butler, poetical reanains Of, <dis-

covered by the antiquaTy Thyer,

326.

Camden Club, purpose of, 311 —
a curiaus volume of, 315 et seq.

'"Cankdiaiii" 'niistaken use of, for
Candian, 74.

Carfrafe, the audtioneer, 60 et seq. —
selling fragments 'Of early Eng-
lish poetry, 61.

"Causes C^lfebres," records of
French and Qetaia.n crime, 149
•' et seq. — their fitness 'for novel-
makingi I'Sb.

Celtic Christianity, 365 et seq., 377

*!■ bt seq. '"' ''' '■

Chetham Club, purpose of, 312.

Church architecture of early Brit-
ish Christians, ^"jzetseq.

Classical Uterature, incompleteness
of, 324 — recent 'discoveries in, of
paltry value, "^sS et seq,

Classificatibn 'Of book-hunters, 62.

Clement, David, illustrious French
bibliographer, 2S4.

ChjbS in general, S43 et seq.

Cogswell, Dr, first librarian of the
lAstOri&h liibrary, 174 et seq.

Collectors and their satellites, 30
et seq.-^&% book-re&ders, 113 et
seq, — in relation to llie scholar,

Colulhba, St Adamnan's life of,

374 — among the Picts, 377 — •

- settling sucfcession of Aidan, 383

— atfetdt)tes of, 387, .389, 403,

' &&— 7-Coluinba fishing, 355.

Compositors, characteristics of, 76

■' et seq, — their reasons for interest
in an author's work, 77 et seq. —
""■IjiU-bookS" '6i, ■79-^their pro-
fessional apathiy, St.

■Gcjpyri^t Act, value of, 191.

^Course of reading," a so-called,
no.

Creation of libraries, i58 et seq,

Criteilnal trials, 'attractive interest
of, 148 — "illustrating" of, iso-

OathbeM, 'St, and the solan-geese,
390 et seq,'

Dame aux Cam^lias qubted, 10

note.
Dealer^ in tteif i-elations to bbok-

buyers, 107.
Decay of books, 211 et seq.
De' Qutocey 5n the Society of

Friends, 8, 9.
Desulteity I'e&dei', or Bohettiiin of

literature, 108 et seq.

42 2

Index.

Devices of old printers, collection
of, 64 et seq.

Dibdin, quotation from his Bib-
liomania, 18 — known as, !' Fog-
gy Dibdin," 89 — at the Rox-
burghe sale, 91;— as a book-hun-
ter, 165 — on the cradle of the
book-club system, 267 — ^his
"Library Companion," 280 et
seq. ..:•■■ I

"Didot" Horace, in the Junot
Library, 63. ,, , , ,

Dietrich, collection of theses by, 64.

Diogenes, the so-called tub of, 120
.note.

Directory of a city, the, as afford-
ing profitable reading, 155. ,

Douglas, Francis, anecdotetold in
his description , of the east coast
of Scotland, 9 note. • ,

' ' Dragon " as a book-hunjer, vide
"Vampire." ., ; ,,!• .. ._

Drunkenness of aiformer age, 11.

Duphcates, first buying of, 16 —
most virulent form of biblio-
mania, 173.

Early Noi;thern S,aints, .352 et
seq. \

Ecchellensis, Abraham, his con-
troversy ■wiih Flayigny, 67.

Ecclesiastical architecture, 372 et
seq. , ;

Ecclesiologist, the, as editor of
book-club literature, 321.

Editions of the Qlassics,, typograph-
ical blunders in,: 68.

" Editio princepsj" adva;ntages of
possessing an;!; 167^- of Boc-
caccio, 91.

Elzevir Csesar, Brunet's measure-
ment of, 26— origin of its rarity,
66. ,

Elzevirs, reason of tljeir not being
rare at present, 225.

Errors in the various editions of
the Bible, 67 et seq.

Evans, the auctioneer, 93.

Exchequer bill, purious specimen
of, 134 et seq.

Facsimiles, extensive manufac-
ture of, 27.

Farmer, Dr Richard, and Johnson,
I'io et seq.

1 Feuerbfich's German collection of
causes cilitres, 149.

Ferrier's Bibliomania, quotation
from, 86 note.

Fires in libraries, 210 et seq..

Fisher, Rev. John, Bishop of Roch-
ester, originator of Library of St
John's, 204 et seq.

Flavigny's controversy with Abra-
ham, Ecchellensis, if].

'. Fountains, religious controversies

connected with,, 491 et seq.
■ French causes cilihres, 149 et
■ seq. , .

French novels, thenlorals of, 10.

Friends, Society of, greatest crim-
inals found among, 8 — De Quin-
cey's testimony to the same effect,

..id. et.seq.

Furniture, old, 192.

Fustian, curious statute of Henry
VII. concerning, 142 et seq.

Game of Chess, by Caxton, cap-

' tured in Holland by Snuffy Davie,
1 222.

Genealogist, a, as editor of book-
club literature, 316. et seq. — his
influence and genius, 318.

Genealogyi Scottish peculiarities
in, 317-^ — extract on, from the
Liber de Antiquis Legibus, 318.

Genius, rewards of, unequally dis-
tributed, 258.

-Glasgow, the shield argent of, 393
etseq. .

Gleaner, the, and his harvest, 124
etseij..

"Good reader," a, the bore of a
house, 113.

Gordon, Sir Robert, collector of
Gordonstoun Library, 97 et seq.

.Government and public libraries,
191.

Graham, Mr Lorinier, collection
by, 186 et seq.

Grandison, Sir Charles, his per-
fection a defect, 8.

" Grangerites," peculiar glory of,
82 et jcy. ^origin of name, ii. —
their mode of proceeding, 83 et
seq.

Greek nomenclature, abuses and
merits of, 2.

GroUier, a princely collector, 48.

Index.

423

Hagiology, 353.

Hallervord, John, Bibliotheca Cu-
riosa of, 241.

Harvard Library, loss of old, igo.

Havelok the Dane reprinted by
Roxburghe Club, 279.

Hazlewood, Joseph, a black sheep
in the Roxburghe Club, 272 —
description of his treasures; ih.
et seq. — title of one of his re-
prints, 273 — description of an-
other of his^ reprints, ib. note —
fate of his History,' 274.

Heathenism in the British Isles,
400 ei seq.

Heber, Richard, origin of his
library, 98 et seq. — Dibdin and
Heber, 99 — duplicating his col-
lection, 173;

Hierology of Gtpeece; 359.

Highland springs, pilgrimages to,
299. ■

Historical literature, reprints of,
327 — in manuscript, ii. et seq,

Histrio - Mastix of Prynne, its im-
fortunate history, 129 et seq.

Hobby, the, of book-hunting, 101
et seq.

Hortensius, 267.

Illustrating of criminal trials,
150 — its advantages to posterity,
tt. et seq. — at its height, 180
note — illustrating a folio, copy of
Shakespeare, ih. note.

Illustrators of books, the, known as
" Grangerites," 82 — their mode
of proceeding, 83 et seq.

Imperfect copies, completion of, 27.

Index Expurgatorius of Charles
Lamb, 152 note.

Inlaying, process of, 219.

lona, the saints of, 382.

Ireland, history of, in early , times
fabulous, 362! Keating's His-
tory, ib. et seq.

Ireland, primitive church in, 368 et

Irish Archaeological, and other
Clubs, 312 et seq. < \

Irish " bulls," instances of, 132.

Irish statutes and Irish history, 146
et seq.

JoCHER, Allgemeines Gelehrten
Lexicon of, 235,

Johnson and Dr Richard Farmer,

130 et seq.
Johnston, Captain, his Lives of

Highwaymen and Pirates, 149.
Jolly, Bishop Robert, 244 — as a

book-hunter, 245.
"Jolly" Club, the, 246.
Jones, Sir William, reading Cicero,

III.
Junot, the library of, 63.

Keating, Jeffrey, D.D., his His-
tory of Ireland, 363 et seq.

Kent, " Chancellor, collection of,
184 et seq. '

Kentigem, St, anecdotes of, 392 et
seq.

Knox. Vicesimus, Spirit of Des-
potism by, 197.

Lamb, Charles, Index Expurga-
torius of, 152 note.

Large-paper copies, aspirants after,
86.

Laurentian Library at Florence,
198. • - ■•

Law books, composition of, irS.

Law maxim^, absurd book on, 138
note.

Law papers as furnishing humor-
ous reading, 13s et seq.

Law technicSities, vagaries of, 136
et seq.

Levant monks, apathy of, with ref-
erence to priceless books, 209.

Librarians recruited frbm the ranks
of book-hunters, 227 — disadvan-
tages of "Cerberus" librarians,
228 et je^. — Angelo- Mai of the
Vatican, 229 — Magliabecchi, ib,
et ijey.— Adrien Baillet, 230 et seq.
— ^librariansas scholars, 231 ei^jK^.

Libraries as stimulants to intellec-
tual culture, lis *' ^^i- — growth
of great libraries, 169 — impossi-
bility of their being improvise.4,
ib. et seq. — their gradual accum-
ulation, Tjo et seq. — Imperial Li-
brary at Paris, 176, 205, &c. —
size of American libraries, Har-
vard, Astorian, Library of Con-
gress, Boston Athenasum, 176-^
their large number in the States,
ib. — The Private Libraries of
New York, by James Wynne,

424

Index.

M.D., 177 — specimen of a Nejy
York interior, 182 — library of
Chancellor. Kent, 184 et seg.-~ai
Mr Lorimer Graham, 186 — of
Rev. Dr Magoon, 187 et seq. — of
Mr Menzies, 189 note — Harvard
Library, 190 — Government and
public libraries, 191 — privileged
libraries and the Copyright Act,
193 note — British Museum Li-
brary, 197 et seq. — Ambrosian
Library at Milan, igS^Lauren-
tian Library at Florence, ib. —
Bodleian Library, ib. — Me-
moirs of-, Libraries, by Edward
Edwards, 199 note — Surharn
College Library, nucleus of Trin-
ity of Oxford, 203— burning of
Alexandrian Library, 211.

Licensing, abolition of, in England,
208. ,

Limiting number of impressions,
281 et seq.

Literary forgeries, moral code of,
303 et seq.

Long Parliament, proceedings of,
328 et seq.

LucuUus, Magnus, of Grand Pri-
ory, 46 et seq.

I^canthropy, 279.

Magi, in their conflicts with saintg,
401 et seq.

Magliabecchi, the librarian, 229 ^
seq.

Magoon, Rev. Dr, library of, 187
ei seq.

Maitland Club, 312.

Margaret, Queen of Scotland, as a
saint, 355.

Meadow, Archdeacon, description
of as a mighty book-hunter, 14
— at an auction, 15 — a portion
of his collection sold, 17 — reputed
to read his own books, 18 — his
learning, 19.

Medici, library of the, 198 et seq.

Men of the Time, printers' blun-
ders in, 75.

Menzies, Mi;, valuable American
collection of, 189 note.

Metaphysics, origin of name, 127.

Monkbarns ks a bpok-hunter, 165
. etseq.—\A% description of Snuffy
Davie's prowlings, 221 et seq, ■

Nathalan, St, anecdote of, 395.
Newgatfe Calendar, interest of,

148.
New York, private libraries of, 177

et^ seq.
Nomenclature, Greek, abuses and

merits erf, 2.
Noy, Attorney - General, and the

Histiio-Mastix, 130.

Oeleichs, John Charles Conrad,
rare work by, 207.

Old writers) their careful disclaim-
ing of original ideas, 117.

Olio, Grose's, extract from, 54 note.

Onslow, Mr, and naming of mem-
bers of Parliament, 131.

Owen's Parallelograms, the nature
of, 13 — biographical notice of
Owen in Men of the Time, 75
€t seq.

Oxford, Bishop of, biographical
notice of, in Men of the 'Time,
75-

PAL^ffiiOGRAPHiST, meaning of the
name, 3.

Palimpsest, meaning of, 3.

Pamphlets, careful preservation of,
enforced, 339.

Panel, meaning of, in England and
'in Scotland, 138.

Papaverius, "Thomas, 32 et seq. —
his unpunctixality, '33 — his cos-
tiune, ib. et seq. — his eloquence,
35, 36— on vagrancy, 38 — ^his ir-
riesponsibility in pecuniary mat-
ters, 39 — his charity, 41 — as a
philosbpher of human nature, 42
— as a book-hunter, ib. et seq. —
as a borrower of books, 43 et seq.
—his acute sensibility, 45.

Peignot, his Dictionnaire de Bib-
Bdogie, ii27 note, 207 — his dic-
tionary of condemned books, 208
— as a vagabond bibliographer,
239 et seq.

Philobiblionof Richard of Bury, 199
— extract from, 220 note.

Photius, curious history of the Bib-
liotheca: of, 236.

Picts, St Columba among the,
377-

Pinkerton, John, description of,
28s.

Index.

425

Playbills, collection of, a phase: of
bibliomania, 64.

Poems, and plays as relics of pure
literature, 5*17 et seq.

Popular authors objects of compe-
tition among publishers, 260 ei
. seq.

Preservation of literature, 205 ei seg.
— politics and religion, with ref-
erence to, 208 — wars and revolu-
tions with reference ' to, 209 —
books, in the midst of fire, 210.

Pretenders, 161 et seq. — generally
bargain - hunters, 162 — their de-
Vices, 163.

Printers' blunders serviceable to
literattire, ji et seq. — laughable
examples of, 72 et seq. — tragic
results of, 75 — examples of, in
Men of the Time, 76.

Printing press, private, an appal-
ling form of biblioinania, 293 —
possession of, by Sir Alexander
Boswell, 294.

Professional dealer, the, 107.

Prowler different from auction-
haunter, 88 et seq. ■

Prynne and his Histrio-Mastix, 129
et seq. . .'

Publishers and good literature^ 262.

Quaker collector of paintings, a,

anecdote of, 103.
Queen Cadyow and St Kentigern,

394-

Rambles in search of sculptured^
stones, 411 etseqi

Rarity, the comparative,- of certain
booiis, 170 et j^g'.-^ Americans
and the rarity of boaks, 173 et
seq. — rarity of works of early
English printers, 2i8. et.' seqi^-
rarity increased, by inoreasecf
number of copies, 282.

Rateliffe,' Dr, a physician, 69 note, -

Reading of books by book-hunters
and possessors of libraries, log-^—
impossible in^cert'ain cases, no —
ought to be'desultory, ii. et seq.

"tReadJug with the fingersi" a test
of scholarship, 116. ' ' '

Religion and politics ih reference
to the preservation of literatiu'e,
208:

Religious hypocrites, uncharitable-
ness and intolerance of, 7 — their
development into criminals, 8.

Reminiscences of a book-hunting
life, 59 et seq.

"Remnants," or broken books,

2S4-

Rent-paying in Scotland, 140 note.

Resuscitated literature, peculiar
value of, 324 — objected to in
hagiology, 339.

Richard of Bury, Bishop of Dur-
ham, as a private collector, 199
et seq. — as a benefactor of pos-
terity, 200 et jc^.— originator of
Durham College Library, the
nucleus of Trinity of Oxford,
203 — on the treatment of manu-

' scripts (quotation from the Phil-
obilDlion), 220 note.

Ritson, Josephi opponent of John
Pinkerton, 287*^ je^i^his pecu-
liarities, 288 et seq.

Robespierre, draft of decree before;
concerning the public libraries of
Paris, 209. ,

Rbmansas .introducers of ' Christi-
■ anity into Great Britain, 36a, 379'
—as slighters of history, 360 et
seq.

Rout upon Rout, by Felix Nixon,

57-

Roxburghe Club,. 97, 265 et seq. —
its origin, 268 — dts dinner and
toasts, 269 — its members, 270 —
its "revels," 27S^Hazlewood's-
connection with, it. and note et
seq. — reprinting by, ■ of ancient
books, 278 et snq. — its first seri-
ous efforts, 279— Dibdih as its
master, 280 — under the care of
the scholarly Botfield, ■281— .its
proffer of membership to Sir
- Walter Scott, • 283 et seq.

Roxburghe, Duke of, as a book-
hunter; 90,- 164— origin of his"
bibliomania, 90 et seq:

Roxburghe Library, sale of, 89 et
seq. — scenes at the auction, 92 «i
«^.— ^E&rliSpencer present, 93 c^
seq.

Rubricists; . book-hunters as, 63.

Rule, Gilbert, ghost-story concern-
ing, 346 et seq.

"Runic Knot," the, 409.

426

Index.

Saints, the early Northern, 352 et
seq. — the making of, 353 — fes-
tival days of, 354 et seq.- — Bol-
landus and bis successors on
saints, 355 et jej'.— value in his-
tory of saint literature, 358 et
seq. — vestiges of the peculiar
characteristics of early Northern
saints, 371 et seq.—'&sa church
architecture, 372 — saints of Irish
origin innumerable, 375 — inde-
pendent of Rome, 381- — mostly
all obscure, ib. et seq. — as pro-
phesiers of death, 383— personal
habits of, 3B9 — fishing and ma-
rine anecdotes of, 395 et seq.

Scholars in relation to collectors,
IIS et seq.

School-books, rarity of old, 215 et
seq.

Schoolboy life, reminiscences of,
conjured up by an advertise-
ment, 157 etseq.

Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, a
curious book, 240.

Scots Acts, brevity of, 146.

Scott, Sir Walter, as a book-club
man, 283 — his admission to the
Roxburghe Club, ib. et seq. —
writing a song for the Bannatyne
Club, 285 — his reprint of a trial
for murder, 290 et seq. — imposed
on by Robert Surtees, 300 et seq.
— first idea of Waverley sug-
gested to him by Surtees, 306.

Sculptured stones in Scotland, 405
et seq. —description of one, 406^
their character, 407 et seq. — Mr
John Stuart's transcripts of, 410
T-ramble in search of, 411 etseq.
—one of them at Lochcolissor,
ib. — others in various parts, 412
et seq.

Seneca commending literary mod-
eration, 119 note.

Serf, St, and his robin, 392.

Shakespearian criticism a branch of
knowledge, 69 et seq. — valuable
to literature, 71.

Sheepfolds, Ruskin on the con-
struction of, 125.

Sloane, Sir Hans, originator of
British Museum Library, 197.

Smart, Fitzpatrick, as a mighty
book-hunter, 19 — his peculiar

line known as the " Fitzpatrick
Smart Walk," 20 — his fancy ill
to please, 21 — his household
gods, 22 — his dress, 23 — his
wonderful genius, 25 — fate of his
collection, ib.

Smithsonian Institution, origin of,
174.

Snuffy Davie, a prince of book-
hunters, 166 — his captiure of the
Game of Chess, 222.

Societies, book and other, 247 c<
seq. — the transactions of learned, i
an outlet for genius, 262 et seq,

Spalding Club, 312 — as an art-
union, 404.

Spalding, John, value of his liter-
ary remains, 330 et seq. — quota-
tion from his "Memorials," 333
et seq. — characteristics of his
writings, 337.

Spencer, Earl, at the Roxburghe
Library sale, 93 et seq. — his skir-
mish for the Caxtons, 123. ,

Spottis\YOode Society, purpose of
the, 247.

State trials replete with romance,
148.

Stated-task reader, the, 113.

Statute-making, pleasantry in, 143. ,

Stuart, Mr John, and the sculp-
tured stones in Scotland, 410.

Superstitions, a book on, replete
with errors in language, 153 et
seq.

Surtees Club, 312.

Surtees, Robert, the historian of
Durham, as a book-club man,
298 — anecdotes of, ib. it seq. — .
imposing on Sir Walter Scott,
300 et seq. — his contributions to
Scott's Minstrelsy, 304 — sug-
gesting Waverfey to Scott, 306.

Sydenham Club, 265.

Thomson, James, and his books,
29 — his uncle's criticism on
"Winter," ib.

Thomson, Rev. William, character
of, 67 et seq. — his translation of
Cunningham's Latin History of
Britain, 68 note.

Title of an English Act, 143.

Title-page, a, no distinct intimation
of contents of book, 124— fram-

Index.

427

ing of exhaustive title-page, 126

et seq. — specimen of lengthy

title-page, 127 — advantages of

such, 128.
Toy literature, 216 note.
Transactions of learned societies,

262.
Trinity Library, Oxford, origin of,

203.
Types of Guttenberg and Faust,

beauty of, 218.
Types, MacEwen on the, its fate at

an auction, 125.
Typographical blunders, 71 et seq.

United States well stocked with
libraries, 176 — its citizens as
book-hunters, 177.

"Vampire" as a book-hunter, 55
— ^his collection, 56 et seq. — his
policy at auctions, S7 't '^1-

Vellum books, 63.

Vemey, Sir Ralph, noting proceed-
ings of the Long Parliament,
328 et seq.

Vision, a, of mighty book-hunters,
14 et seq.

Vulgate of Sixtus V., multitude of
errors in, 67.

Waltonian Library, the, of Rev.
Dr Bethune, 87 et seq.

Wars and revolutions, factors in
the destruction of libraries, 209.

Watt, Dr, his bibliography, 234.

Watts, Isaac, and the "Granger-
ites," 83 et seq.

Wells dedicated to saints, 397 et
seq.

Wilberforce, Samuel, Bishop of
Oxford, humorous blunder in a
biographical notice concerning,
76.

Wilbrod, St, and the Frisian
Prince, 376.

William and the Wer Wolf re-
printed by Roxburghe Club, 279
et seq.

Wodrow, Rev. Robert, his liter-
ary remains and collections, 338
— his private note-books, 340 —
extracts from his note-books con-
cerning "special providences"
^^^etseq. — his ghost and witch
stories, 346 et seq. — anecdote
concerning the devil's sermon,
349 et seq.

"Ye" and "the," common de-
lusion concerning, 270 note.

THE END.